


La Vie En Or

by AMeetingEngagement



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), Sabrina (1995)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-13
Updated: 2014-06-12
Packaged: 2017-11-25 09:02:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 30,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/637260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMeetingEngagement/pseuds/AMeetingEngagement
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Belle French lives above the garage, and Hobson Gold owns it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

(Thanks to Midstorm for the fantastic cover art!)

Once upon a time, on the north shore of Long Island, not far from New York, there was a very, very large mansion where there lived a family by the name of Gold. The house was faced with a smoky grey sandstone and was called by the neighbors “the Dark Castle”, though it was not an unpleasant place.

There were servants inside the mansion, and servants outside the mansion. Boatmen to tend the boats and six crews of gardeners – two for the solarium, the rest for the grounds – and a tree surgeon on retainer. There was even a horticulturalist for the hundreds of roses that lined the garden walks.

There were specialists for the indoor tennis courts, and the outdoor tennis courts, the outdoor swimming pool and the indoor swimming pool.

And over the garage, there lived a chauffeur by the name of French, imported from Australia years ago to drive the Rolls-Royce…and a daughter named Belle.

Among other things, the Golds were noted for the parties they gave. Few people anymore give parties the way they did. It never rained on the night of a Gold party. The Golds wouldn't have stood for it. (Some even said that they had a special deal with the powers that be.)

There was Beverly Gold, who inherited the Gold Corporation when her first husband had an unfortunate run-in with a pack of wild dogs on an African safari. (Her second husband had been somewhat less adventurous but prone to overindulgence, and died of a more mundane heart attack on the thirteenth hole of Pebble Beach.)

Beverly was on the cover of Fortune.

There was Hobson, the older son, who graduated from St. Andrews at 19 and took his mother and the company for a spin on the high-tech textiles market... and turned a hundred-million-dollar family business into some serious money.

Hobson was on the cover of Time.

But most of all, there was David, the younger son, who was in and out of many schools and even more relationships. He was handsome and charming and funny and romantic.  
David did a Calvin Klein ad.

The chauffer’s daughter knew all this because she had grown up on the Gold estate, and she was in love with David. She had been in love with him all her life, since she was old enough to look up from her books and notice how his golden hair shone and how bright a blue his eyes were when the light hit them just right. David was perfect; David was witty, and clever, and kind, and he really did look quite good in a suit. He wore splendid suits, particularly for parties like the one going on that night.

But David was with another woman.

Belle peered through the tree’s thick canopy of leaves, craning her neck to see through the tiny gap to the next garden over, where a lone couple faced each other over an ornamental bench. He was wearing Armani again tonight, she thought to herself; David always wore Armani to parties. But that blonde he was with, she had absolutely no idea how sallow her black dress made her look. And her nose was just the tiniest bit crooked, wasn’t it?

Belle shoved her spectacles up her nose and leaned out over the branch a little more, watching David as his dazzlingly white teeth flashed in a laugh at something the blonde had said.

“Belle?”

She jumped, startled, and looked down to see who had spoken. Her father stood under the tree, shaking out the chamois cloth he’d been using to polish the Bentley and shaking his head just as sadly. “Belle, come down from the tree, please.”

Belle sighed. “She made him laugh.”

“You have to finish packing, petal.”

Belle pushed her glasses more securely up her nose and descended to a slightly lower branch, checking to see that it still had a view of the next garden. “Papa, am I witty?”

Maurice French arched a brow and gave a small, sad smile. “I wonder if Paris is far away enough.”

“No, really, Papa. Do you think I'm funny?”

“Hilarious. You should host a talk show.”

She managed not to roll her eyes, but only just. “I’m not joking, Papa.”

“Belle, the full-time observation of David Gold is not a recognized profession. Now please, get out of that tree.”

She looked back at the garden, but David was no longer in sight. “In a minute,” she said absently, craning her neck to see better. Where had he gone? Blast, she’d have to change trees now. She swung heavily down off her perch, and the tree showered a few leaves down on her as she landed at its base.

Someone collided with her, and she squeaked and looked up through a muddle of bangs and spectacles. Strong hands steadied her, and white teeth and soft lips filled her view for a moment. “Oh, it's just you, Belle,” David said, patting her absently on the shoulder.

Belle danced backward and frantically brushed leaves from her hair, dimly aware of her father looking heavenward in dismay from the other side of the car he was polishing. Suddenly her hands and feet were too big and she was a thousand feet tall and clumsy as an ogre. “Hello, David,” she said breathlessly.

“I thought I heard somebody,” David said, distracted by rearranging the bottle of champagne he’d tucked under one arm and settling his coattails to cover the flutes Belle knew he’d slipped into the lining of the coat. David always brought his paramours champagne that way.

Belle’s heart fell at the reminder that he was on his way to meet another conquest. Someday, she vowed, someday that champagne would be for her…but not tonight. “No, it's nobody,” she murmured, watching as he rounded the garage and headed off in the direction of the tennis courts.

“Belle?” 

She sighed, heavily, and took the polishing cloth her father was offering. She wiped it in desultory circles over the hood of the car, waiting for the same old speech about it being time to leave the grounds of the estate for the real world.

Maurice shook his head a bit at his daughter’s melancholy expression. “You've spent more of your life up that tree than you have on solid ground. You know how lucky we are that Mrs. Gold has friends who have a job for you so you can have this European experience? The time in Paris will be so good for you.”

“I know, Papa,” Belle replied dutifully. She did want to go to Paris, desperately, but she also didn’t want to leave David. Of course there was no hope there, his mother would never let him marry the chauffer’s daughter, but she was in love and that didn’t matter. Things could change, couldn’t they?

“If your mother were alive, she'd be so happy. It's what she always wanted for you, a chance to follow your dreams.”

Belle fingered the pearl that hung around her throat on a thin golden chain – the necklace had been her mother’s, and was one of the few keepsakes they’d brought from Australia. “What if he forgets all about me?”

“How can he forget someone he doesn't know exists?” When her eyes widened and her mouth parted in protest, Maurice held up his hands placatingly. “I didn't mean that. I just meant...there's much more to you than this obsession. I hope you know that. You should never let anyone else decide your fate for you.”

Deep down, she knew he was right, but David made her feel…tingly, all over. Like she’d been stealing sips from the champagne flutes that all the waiters were carrying and she was just the tiniest bit drunk. She wanted to feel that way the rest of her life, and David was the only one who could do that to her. But her father thought her young and foolish, and she didn’t want to argue with him the night before she left for Paris. “Thanks, Dad,” she said, rounding the car and leaning up to kiss him on the cheek.

“Good night,” he called after her as she ran up the steps to the apartment above the garage. She had a lot of packing to do yet…and maybe there would still be a chance to see David one last time before she left for the airport.

* * *

Hobson Gold hated parties. Really hated them. Hated the socializing, hated the small talk, hated playing the dutiful son when his mother wanted to show him off to her friends. It took him away from business. But not only the social circles got invited to Beverly Gold’s parties, and he had to admit it was a good chance to slip away for a few moments here and there and conduct deals that were better kept away from the boardroom.

Unfortunately, the boating accident that had made it necessary for him to use a cane when he was on his feet all day also made it harder to escape his mother when she was on a mission. Right now she was bearing down on him with a glass of scotch held at port arms. His mother didn’t drink much, but when the scotch came out it was either because there was something she wanted him to do – or something he’d already done.

“Hobson, Astrid just told me that you fired her husband,” Beverly said without preamble, setting the scotch down on a side table with a clunk. Her arms crossed over the draped bodice of her gown, and her son’s practiced eye noted that the new silk-bamboo blend was holding up well under the abuse.

Gold grimaced, his attention returning to matters at hand. “He's an idiot.” The man – Leonard or Leroy or whatever it was – had been the general manager at a small plant that was developing heat-wicking fabrics for miners working in extreme environments. Had been being the key phrase; the man had only recently married his mother’s friend and was obviously too besotted to concentrate on doing the job properly. After the third batch of sub-par samples had come out of the plant, Hobson had deemed it necessary to take action.

His mother, of course, had not been privy to that explanation – not that she would care. She put much more emphasis on social relationships than he thought necessary. “But she was a bridesmaid at my wedding!” Beverly protested, predictably. “She's one of my best friends.”

Hobson shrugged. “This is business, Mother. Listen, I need to go drop something off in David's room. When he surfaces from this week's love of his life, tell him I put his suspenders back in his closet.”

Beverly sighed, recognizing his escape attempt for what it was. “You're not leaving now. You'll miss my fireworks.”

He smiled and leaned in to give her cheek a kiss. “It's okay, Mother. I had a pony ride and I got my face painted. Good night.”

Snatching up his cane, he beat a quick retreat before she could try to introduce him to the daughter of another friend. She’d already tried that once, and while Ruby made a fabulous secretary – the woman was like an alpha wolf and almost as effective as getting what he wanted as he was – she was not marriage material.

If he had things his way, no one would ever be marriage material. Even he recognized that he was a difficult man to love, and he planned to keep it that way. Marriage and love were…complications. Business was much simpler.

* * *

Hobson cursed mildly as he opened David’s door and immediately tripped over a polo helmet and what seemed to be a bag full of fencing foils. David had never been able to keep his room clean, even with a whole army of maids and butlers in the house, and his older brother had always resented it just a little bit. Not that he’d ever say as much to David; he’d just get a laugh and a clap on the shoulder and his half-brother would be off to whatever charity ball or golf fundraiser he’d decided to support that week.

The closet, thanks to the ceaseless efforts of the maids, was at least organized, and Hobson flicked on the switch and disappeared into the rows of tailored suits to look for the rack where David kept his suspenders. His knee was aching a bit today – a sure sign the weather was likely to turn in the next day or so – and he leaned down to rub it. The best surgeons his mother could buy had done wonders after the boating accident that had caused the injury, but it still pained him occasionally.

More, on days when he remembered how it led to Bae’s mother demanding custody and spiriting his son back to her family’s home in Paris. He’d barely seen the boy in years, and even he had to admit that getting caught up in business was a poor excuse. Someday, someday he’d have to change that…

The door to the bedroom creaked, and he looked up in surprise. David was still romancing his latest fling on the tennis courts, wasn’t he? Well, it must be him; the maids wouldn’t be in to deal with the inevitably scattering of party clothes until midday tomorrow. “Come in,” he called, going back to searching for the hook on which to hang the suspenders.

Someone quickly opened the door and stepped into the room, but to Hobson’s surprise, it wasn’t David’s voice who called out. “I came to say goodbye.”

“What?” Hobson shoved the suspenders onto a shelf and limped toward the closet door, but before he could make it, the person – woman – cried hastily, “Don't come out! If I look at you, I might not be able to get through this.”

Oh, god. It was Belle. Belle, the chauffer’s daughter, who had the worst crush imaginable on his younger brother. He’d seen her up that tree a thousand times, mooning over David, and now that she was leaving for Paris he’d hoped that she’d outgrown the infatuation. Apparently not.

Out of mischief or amusement or something of the sort, he just smiled and kept himself tucked behind the door, waiting to see what she would do.

“Please don't say anything,” Belle went on, her voice quivering with emotion. “I'm leaving tomorrow for Paris...and I'll be away a long time.”

Hobson made a noncommittal noise to encourage her to go on.

“I don't expect you to think about me while I'm gone.” She giggled a little, nervously. “You haven't thought about me while I was here. I just want to say…I think I know you better than anybody else. I mean, whatever they think or say, I know the truth. That you're a wonderful person – kind and generous and – and, for what it's worth, know that someone very far away is thinking of you.”

He really had to stop this before she embarrassed herself any more…but she was being so endearing. He peered around the corner of the door and found that she’d turned away; as quietly as he could, he slipped out of the closet and started toward her, meaning to catch her attention before she went further.

Belle’s head was bowed and she was staring fixedly at the door of the room. “So, if there's anything I can ever do…” she said timidly.

Hobson decided it was time to put her out of her misery. “Could you bring me one of those little Eiffel Tower paperweights?” he said innocently.

He’d expected her to be surprised, but he hadn’t expected the resultant shriek and flight from the room. “Oh, my God!” echoed faintly down the hallway in tones of utter horror, and there was a tinkle as a forgotten cup and saucer lost its fight with gravity and toppled from David’s dresser to the floor.

Bemused, Hobson switched on one of the lamps on the dresser and peeked in the mirror. He hadn’t forgotten to shave that evening, had he? The reflection that looked back assured him that everything was perfect, down to the crisp black bow tie and gleaming lapels of his suit. His hair was maybe getting a little long, but he couldn’t see what was so frightening about that.

Hobson shook his head at the folly of younger women and went to save the cup and saucer from further injury. The saucer had survived, but the cup – one of his mother’s ubiquitous bone china sets – had not fared as well, and chipped against something during its fall. He tucked it into a pocket to bring to the kitchen later; no doubt one of the butlers would be able to repair or replace it.

He retrieved his cane from just outside the door – how had Belle missed that, anyway? – and hobbled down the hall to his own seldom-used rooms. With any luck, the party would be winding down and he could hide out in one of the salons until his mother’s guests had consumed the last of the champagne and piled into their limos for the trip home. 

* * *

Belle groaned into her pillow, ignoring the way her glasses were smashed against her face. It wasn’t enough that she embarrass herself in front of David – oh, no, she had to go and do it with Hobson.

Hobson, the older brother, the one who always made her feel like her feet were the size of skis and every word that came out of her mouth was uttered by a trained parrot. Hobson, whose mouth was perpetually twisted in wry derision and ready to deliver a cutting remark. Hobson was famous for reducing housemaids to tears and making business rivals quiver in their Italian leather shoes.

Suddenly, putting an entire ocean between her and the Dark Castle didn’t seem like such a bad idea after all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally got going on this again! This bit took me a while because I didn't want to copy the film quite as closely, but things should pick up steam from here.
> 
> I realized that I completely lifted the nickname "petal" from Nym's amazing Bed of Thrones, so all credit for the idea goes to her - but I love having Belle's father use it.

“Welcome to La Bibliotheque, Belle. You speak no French, yes?”

Belle gulped nervously as she shook the fine-boned hand that had been offered to her and looked around as if she expected the ornate ceiling of the huge reading room at the Site Richelieu to crash down on her. “No,” she ventured.

Aurora Rêveuse, the conservator who’d been assigned to mentor her, kept striding on across the cavernous room, but tossed an amused glance over her shoulder. “No?”

Blood rushed to Belle’s cheeks as she realized what she’d said. She was getting off to such a bad start! “I mean, I speak a little bit of French, but not very well. I’m much better with the medieval version, and Latin,” she offered hopefully.

Aurora clucked her tongue. “And with such a beautiful French name, too! We must teach you _immediatement_. The Latin will help. Come now, I will show you the conservation centers.”

As she walked, the elegant woman kept peppering Belle with questions, until she’d elicited the whole story; Belle had completed a degree in archival science and preservation at NYU, but her advisor had recommended an apprenticeship and there hadn’t been a spot open for her at the Conservation Center in New York, competition being particularly fierce that year. The Gold family connections had stepped in and arranged for this apprenticeship at the Site Richelieu of Bibliothèque nationale de France, and Belle’s father had urged her to take it for the cultural experience as well as the professional one.

That was the idea, anyway. But surrounded by a susurration of voices speaking a foreign language from which she could only glean a word or two at a time, Belle had begun to doubt the wisdom of the plan. The building was so grand, and all the people she’d met seemed so sophisticated. How was she ever going to fit in? She’d wanted adventure, but she’d always assumed that her adventures were going to start off…well, a bit closer to home. Her heart gave a great pang of longing for the mansion, and for familiar faces…for David’s face…

Aurora saw that her steps had slowed, and swept Belle up with one arm around her shoulders as they headed down a hallway. “None of that, ma chère! You must meet all your fellow prisoners, yes? Madame Mal will be here this afternoon and then you will be working, how do you say, like a _chien.”_

“Prisoners? Madame Mal?” Belle’s stomach seemed to drop past her feet. What had she gotten herself into?

The other woman’s eyes widened, and then she sighed and patted Belle on the shoulder. “Oh, dear, I should not joke. Malorie Carabosse is the head of the preservation department. She is strict and expects perfection of her workers. She can be such a terror sometimes that we call her ‘La Dragonesse’. But she is good, very good. You will learn much from her.”

This was not sounding at all like what Belle had envisioned – being left alone in a quiet room to coax new life from venerable old texts. But this opportunity was not going to present itself at home, and so she would go through with it, misgivings or no.

She reminded herself of that often as she met her fellow conservators and learned her way around the surprisingly high-tech labs hidden behind the rococo plasterwork and gilding that had intimidated her on her first sighting of the reading room. Belle was glad she had paid close attention in all of her chemistry classes, because her first assignment was working on experiments to find ways to buffer the corrosiveness of iron gall ink. It was a tedious process, testing a multitude of treatments on paper samples, but even though her initial experiments were all failures she recorded the results of each with meticulous care.

Unfortunately, Madame Mal was indeed a terror. The older woman knew more about paper conservation than anyone Belle had ever met, but she had a horrible habit of sneaking up on her apprentices and pointing out their errors in her deep throaty voice at just the moment when they were in the midst of some delicate operation.

For Belle, who had never been the most graceful of women, this was a complete nightmare. The first time Madame Mal had approached her beyond an icily polite greeting on her first day, Belle dropped a whole container of buffering solution on her worktable.

Both of them had looked down at the dark splashes on Madame Mal’s tailored slacks, Belle with utter horror and her supervisor with a barely-concealed sigh of exasperation. “Mademoiselle French,” Madame Mal drawled with condescension thick in her heavily accented voice, “As well-funded as we are, I do not encourage waste in my lab. In the future, I expect you will be less careless with your chemicals, yes?”

Belle had flushed from her neck to her scalp and murmured a hasty apology, then snatched up a cloth and moved to blot the liquid from Mal’s trousers. The woman halted her with a shake of her head, displacing not a single blonde curl from her chignon, and strode off to stalk her next victim.

Every subsequent encounter with ‘La Dragonesse’ went much the same way. Belle took to heart everything that Madame Mal told her about conservation, and devoured the woman’s written discourses on techniques with an almost religious fervor, but every time the dragon appeared Belle found a new way to display her clumsiness. It was a blessing she wasn’t working on any of the more ancient texts in the lab, or she would probably have been sent home long since.

Belle had some sympathy from her fellow apprentices. Philippe, a man with soft eyes and almost delicate brown curls who turned out to be Aurora’s fiancée, always had a smile and a kind word for her. Emma LaCygne, a tall blonde who had a knack for tracking down rare materials to use in restoring illuminated manuscripts, had a sharp sense of humor and was usually the one to cheer Belle up after her latest blunder by making deprecating remarks about their supervisor. And Auguste Fantoche, another curly-headed brunette who was forever making eyes at Emma, was the one who introduced Belle to the best _bouquinistes_ along the Seine, where she found herself spending a great deal of her free time.

Books were easier than people. Books didn’t expect her to make intelligent conversation in another language, or to explain the theory behind her latest experimental trials, or give her a sad, patronizing smile when she showed up to a gathering in the same dress as last week, glasses askew and hair frizzing. Books didn’t judge her; books let her slip into a fantasy world where she could challenge sorcerers and fight dragons and see clearly how to decide her own fate.

But despite growing up in the Dark Castle, Belle knew that fairy tales were too rare in the real world to go chasing them. So instead of fighting dragons, she protected them – protected the fragile shells of paper and ink that tamed them, and kept her dreaming private until after working hours.

* * *

When she was not buried deep in conservation techniques or nosing about the green shelves of the open-air booksellers, Belle spent a lot of her time thinking about home. Her father had never really mastered email – text messages were as close as he had ever gotten – so the telephone conversations that they had every Sunday afternoon were her only real connection to her old life back at the Dark Castle.

In the first few weeks of her time in Paris, however, the calls were not so much to reassure him that she was well as to convince her not to board the first flight back.

“Papa, I don’t know if I can do this. Back at NYU I fit in, but here I’m hopeless. I’m clumsy and I can’t speak French and I miss everybody,” Belle said two weeks after her arrival as she lay on the narrow bed in her attic apartment. She didn’t add, _and I miss David,_ but from his resigned tone her father obviously heard it in her voice.

_“But you've only been there for two weeks. I doubt every single person at La Bibliotheque thinks you're an idiot.”_

“Only because I haven't met them all. Papa, I dropped a first edition Moliere! On the floor!” She’d been trying out a new pair of ankle boots that Aurora had talked her into buying, and she’d been a bit unsteady on the heels, and the book she had volunteered to deliver to another lab…well, after her slip it was going to need even more work than before.

_“Sweetheart, you're being much too hard on yourself. Give it a chance.”_

Belle heaved a sigh and looked across her bed to the view out her window. She could just see the Ile de la Cite from her top-floor flat in the Quartier Latin, with the ancient bulk of Notre Dame glowing in the syrupy afternoon sun. “I’ll try, Papa.”

_“If it’s any consolation, I doubt Moliere will mind.”_

She sniffed. “It’s not him I’m worried about, it’s Madame Mal. If I can’t stop being so clumsy she’ll never let me do anything more sophisticated than dry-brushing.”

_“You’ll learn, Belle. What matters is you're away from here – experiencing new things, getting another view of the world, finding new friends. And not constantly thinking about you-know-who!”_

Guiltily, Belle snuck a look at her bulletin board. It was starting to fill up with souvenirs of her excursions into the city – metro tickets, passes from the museums, a ticket from a matinee at the Opéra Populaire, receipts from cafes she’d liked – but front and center was her photo of David, which she’d carefully packed in a pocket of her suitcase before leaving Long Island. David’s full lips were curved in the half-smile that was all the fashion photographers would allow, but his eyes were as bright as she remembered from home.

Her pause must have been too obvious, because she caught the faint sound of a sigh from the other line. _“Oh, petal, don’t tell me…”_

Belle let out a quiet wail. “Papa, it’s just that everything here makes me feel so homesick! If I don’t think about David…I feel like I’ll tip over into a hopeless abyss of misery and despair!” Perhaps it wasn’t quite _that_ bad, but back home she’d had something to look forward to each day. Here, with no David, it was so much harder. No matter how many handsome men with romantic accents she met, she kept comparing them to David and they kept coming up short.

There was a pause, and then her father began to laugh softly. _“Belle, do you really mean that?”_

She groaned, but she could see that he had a point – she was being just a tad histrionic. Her world wouldn’t end just because she couldn’t see the man she was crushing on, but it didn’t make her any happier to be away from him. “No, not really. But I _am_ homesick.”

_“I know, Belle. But I’m right at the other end of the phone when you need me. Please try to be happy – for me?”_

“All right, Papa. I’ll try. Love you.”

Her father’s reply barely registered as she flopped onto her back and stared at David’s picture. The logical part of her knew she was being silly, that at her age she should know better than to let infatuation take over her life, but she’d known she loved David for so long that it was hard to imagine _not_ loving him.

Work, that was the only remedy. And she had months of _that_ ahead of her. Maybe things would get better with time.

* * *

“Well, look at that! I think you may have finally cracked the iron gall conundrum,” a voice said from over her shoulder.

Belle had been developing steadier nerves since she’d started working with Madame Mal, and she barely flinched at the loud voice. Setting aside the tray of paper samples she’d been examining under the microscope, she turned to see who was offering congratulations.

Jefferson Chapelier, Madame Mal’s manically cheerful chief assistant, grinned and batted his eyes comically. Belle couldn’t help but smile back at him; at first, she’d thought him just as aloof and inscrutable as the head of the lab, but one day he’d joined the junior conservators for their afternoon café wearing an absolutely ridiculous top hat. When he’d caught Belle staring at him, he’d started teasing her about her wide eyes, and then sent everyone into gales of laughter with an impression of what Madame Mal would have to say about the safety concerns of keeping their eyes open too wide around the chemicals in the lab.

After that day, Belle could hardly be intimidated by him anymore, and he seemed to have decided to make a special project out of flirting with her. Aurora and Emma just rolled their eyes whenever he tried it on them – and he did, constantly – but Belle was still new enough to the group to feel flattered by his attention.

His eyes weren’t as blue as David’s, of course. And his dark brown hair was perpetually ruffled, not at all like David’s carefully trimmed look. But he was charming and funny and he made it easy for her to laugh, and she found herself spending more and more time with him outside of work.

“You think so?” she said, shifting aside so he could look into the microscope. “It’s so hard to tell with the modern samples.”

He leaned over the instrument, hooking his thumbs into the pockets of his tightly-tailored vest – he always had vests on under the lab coat that Madame Mal insisted all her employees wear. Somehow Jefferson’s was never buttoned as it should have been, but he never seemed to get in trouble for it. Belle’s, on the other hand, was buttoned as high as it would go; she didn’t want to drop chemicals on anyone, including herself.

“Much less corrosion,” Jefferson announced, then picked up one of her control slides and set it side-by-side with her sample. “See?”

She leaned back over the microscope to compare the two, and her heart leapt when she saw that he was right. The tell-tale corrosion around the letters on the artificially-aged samples that had been treated with the new aqueous phytate solution Mal had developed was _much_ less pronounced than on the untreated samples. After weeks of staring at trays of samples in equal stages of decomposition, no matter how she treated them, having a trial finally come out a success was exhilarating.

Belle was smiling when she pulled her face away from the microscope, and Jefferson applauded her as she swiveled on her chair to face him. _“Il est bien fait!”_ he declared. “This calls for a celebration. And I have the perfect idea!”

“Oh, no really, I was just following directions,” Belle protested. “That shouldn’t merit a party.”

“Nonsense. Any victory in the lair of _la Dragonesse_ deserves recognition, and you can be sure you would not get it from _her.”_ Jefferson tipped an imaginary hat at her. “Leave it to me, petite Belle. And don’t go telling Aurora or Emma, or we’ll have to watch their two lovesick puppies make eyes at them for hours. This will be a private party.”

He whisked himself off before Belle could object again. Bemused, she gathered up the slides she’d prepared and went to record her results in her lab book. If she wrote up this trial before she left work in the evening, she could have it on Madame Mal’s desk in time to get the next round of experiments approved before the end of the week. And maybe this time, she would get to work on a _real_ manuscript!

The idea made her want to bounce on her toes, a disastrous combination when carrying trays of chemicals, so she tamped down her excitement and went about cleaning up her station. The thought of going on a date with Jefferson – and that was precisely what he had maneuvered her into – helped her calm down. In fact, it made her nervous. He’d never taken his flirting beyond the conversational kind that so many Frenchmen seemed to enjoy, and she didn’t _not_ like it, but it seemed…disloyal, somehow. Was she so fickle that her affections could transfer themselves so easily to this new beau? She’d yearned after David for years, and she’d only known Jefferson for a few weeks.

Her father certainly wouldn’t object to it, she was pretty certain about that. He wouldn’t object to her taking an interest in _anyone_ else if it got her mind off his employer’s son, since he was old-fashioned enough to still think of things in terms of who was upstairs and who lived above the garage. In his mind, David was firmly off-limits.

But Belle was certainly not going to do anything just because someone else wanted it – not her father, not _anyone._ She would let Jefferson take her out to be nice to him, but flirting shouldn’t be enough to turn her attention away from what she’d wanted for years. She’d take tomorrow afternoon as it came, and keep reminding herself that it would only be a few more months before she went back to Long Island.

* * *

Jefferson was maddeningly close-mouthed about what he had planned for her celebration, but insisted that she meet him at the Champs de Mars metro station on Saturday afternoon. It was a warm day and there were dozens of other couples about, lounging on blankets on the grass or strolling through the gardens. Jefferson produced an old-fashioned picnic basket and proceeded to lay out a proper tea, complete with pastries and tiny crustless sandwiches. The one concession to the warm day was that they sipped iced tea instead of hot, but her companion had still insisted on teacups; Belle thought they looked perfectly silly, but played along anyway.

_“Felicitations, petite Belle,”_ Jefferson said, raising his teacup and saluting her with it as he sprawled on the scratchy wool blanket he’d brought along. “You’ve passed your first test in the lair of _La Dragonesse._ Not many are suited for facing monsters.”

Belle grinned as she sipped her tea. “She’s not a monster, she’s just…”

“A slave-driver? Taskmaster? Tyrant? Don’t be so kind. She enjoys torturing her _laquais_. Oh, she turns them into brilliant conservators, _certainement,_ but only the ones that survive.” He put a hand to his waist and attempted a bow, though it looked odd in a reclining man. “I think I am in the presence of a survivor, _n’est pas?”_

She was faintly embarrassed by the praise, so she picked through the finger sandwiches and came up with smoked salmon, her favorite. She took a bite and chewed carefully for a moment, but the bite didn’t last long and it was rude of her to leave Jefferson’s question hanging. “It’s not like that,” she replied. “I know Madame Mal is just trying to make us the best we can be at our jobs. And I want to do well.”

Jefferson was looking at her oddly. “You are one of those people who sees the good in everyone,” he said, tilting his head a little to one side, as if she had done something fascinating.

Belle finished her sandwich and folded her arms in mock-affront. “What’s wrong with that?”

With one of his trademark mercurial changes of mood, Jefferson suddenly favored her with a blinding smile. “Nothing at all.”

When he leaned over to kiss her, it didn’t exactly come as a surprise. And it _was_ pleasant, and it didn’t feel bad when he slipped his arms around her and pulled her a little closer. But she didn’t give herself up to the feelings (as so many of her books phrased it), and he was the one who finally broke off the kiss, pulling back with an oddly serious smile on his lips.

“I am in Paris, _ma petite,_ but you are somewhere else,” Jefferson said, tipping her chin up with a gentle finger. “Is it another man?”

Belle nodded and let her head fall forward against his chest. “I’m sorry, Jefferson. I shouldn’t have done this. It isn’t fair to you.”

She felt his chest rise and fall for a moment; then, he carefully pushed her away and propped himself up on one elbow. “Kissing a pretty girl is no hardship,” Jefferson said.

Belle sat up and tucked her legs back underneath her, smoothing her skirt down to cover them better. “But it feels like I’m lying to you. I didn’t mean to do that.”

Jefferson chuckled a little. “It is not me you should worry about, it’s this man of yours. He is waiting for you at home?”

“He…” She hesitated. “Well, not exactly.”

“No? You mean, he does not know you are in love with him?” Her companion shook his head. “Listen. Everyone wants a fairy tale, but no one is willing to go out and try to get it. If you love this man, Belle, you must _tell_ him. Men do not read minds.” He grinned. “Present company excepted, of course.”

Belle rolled her eyes, just a little. “You’re incorrigible.”

“But I am right. If you do not tell him, how will you know if he returns your love? Illusions are dangerous people, _cherie._ They have no flaws.”

She sighed. “I know. But I…I’ve never found the courage to do it.” Her hands tightened into fists as she started to grow agitated. “I don’t know why. I came all this way to Paris to work – you’d think I could bring myself to tell him!”

Jefferson sat up straighter and spread his hands. “If you are looking for courage, perhaps you will find it here. You are in Paris, after all _._ What better place to meet yourself?”

“Meet myself?” Belle picked up a napkin and pleated it between her fingers. “What do you mean, meet myself?”

He made an airy gesture. “Just that. The work in the lab, it is important, but it is not _everything._ Paris is a hundred different worlds to explore, and to hide yourself in one building is to stay in one world. You must go out into the city, drink café, stand on the bridges, go for long walks. It will help you decide what you want – and then you can tell this man that _he_ is it.”

Belle mulled over his words, biting her lip just a little. “You’re being awfully nice about this.”

Jefferson gave the half-shrug that was distinctly French. “I am being _pratique_. It is no use to chase a woman’s heart when she has given it to another.” He plucked a bunch of grapes from the picnic basket and tossed one at her; she just barely managed to catch it, and he grinned as she bobbled the fruit. “Besides, it does me no harm to be seen in the Champs de Mars with a _belle femme, no?”_

She shook her head. “I’m not beautiful.” Emma and Aurora were making inroads on her woefully unfashionable wardrobe, it was true, but she still hid her un-made-up face behind the glasses and never did much with her hair besides braiding it out of the way. Compared to the beauties she’d seen since she’d come to Paris – her own labmates, even! – she didn’t consider herself in the same league.

Jefferson tapped his finger on his lips. “If that is what you think, perhaps we can do something to change your mind. Have you been to a Parisian _coiffeur?”_

“Oh. Well, no. It’s never really been in my budget…”

“Psh! Forget budgets. It will be a gift. Madame Mal may be _une tyran_ , but she does not starve her assistant.” He leaned over and caught up Belle’s long braid, using the tip of it to tickle her nose playfully. “A woman whose outside is as beautiful as her inside is the best player in _le jeu de l'amour._ And before you go back to America, we will make you one who cannot lose, _oui?”_


	3. Chapter 3

Hobson frowned as he made his way toward the driveway. It was a lovely clear day out, but his mind was definitely not concerned with the weather. Mills Textiles had just perfected a new impact protection fabric, and he’d been mulling over the idea of proposing a partnership. Gold Corp’s military applications branch was always in need of new base materials, and a fabric that not only absorbed the force of a shock but _converted it into power_ was a breakthrough he couldn’t ignore.

Maurice French was just pulling the car out of the garage, and Hobson set his briefcase down so he could settle both hands on his cane; leaning on one hand while he waited always gave him a sore back. A partnership with Mills Textiles _would_ be ridiculously profitable, but Regina Mills, the CEO of the company, was not the sort of person to take the first deal offered her. In fact, the moment she so much as smelled his interest she would be on the prowl for a chance to wrangle concessions out of him.

His musing was interrupted by hasty footsteps behind him. Not his mother – she always walked with a deliberate pace, and she wouldn’t be out for a few minutes yet. When Hobson turned, he found his brother, dressed for riding and with a nervous, excited smile plastered across his face. “Hobson! Got a minute?”

Hobson’s frown only got deeper. Their paths rarely crossed before he went to work, and if David had abandoned his normal morning routine of horse riding or tennis or some other pointless athletic venture, disaster must be on the horizon. “David, does it ever occur to you that you're an officer of the Gold Corporation?” he groused.

David just shook his head. “I met someone,” he said, as if declaring that Moses had come down from Sinai.  

Hobson groaned inwardly. David ‘met’ the love of his life with frightening frequency, and he wouldn’t have minded so much if it didn’t usually turn out to be the advent of another run of expenses. David didn’t lavish _all_ of his amours with Tiffany diamonds and trips to Fiji, but he found so many other ways to be nice to them that Hobson dreaded dealing with the credit card bills afterward. And then there was the inevitable financial smoothing-over of ruffled feelings when the woman turned out to be unsuitable for appearing with David too often in public…

The only hope was to break through his current rose-colored haze. “Do you recall the address of our building? It's 389 Park Avenue,” Hobson said, tapping David’s foot with the tip of the cane.

“I'm not kidding!”

“Your office is on the 48th floor. Just across from mine. Where I’m going to work today.”

David took him by the shoulders. “This is really somebody,” he said eagerly.

Hobson was starting to get suspicious. This was a bit more excited than David was usually wont to get over his latest lover. “So what's the problem?” he demanded, narrowing his eyes.

David released him and began pacing. “I've invited her for dinner here Friday, and I don't want you and Mother to – This girl is smart. She's really smart,” he said breathlessly.

His brother smirked. “That certainly hasn't come up before.”

“Listen, Hobson, she's a real lady. She's not a, you know – ”

“Transvestite?” Hobson ventured cheekily, trying to see if David was listening to him.

“She’s a teacher, Hobson. A good teacher. A really good one.”

_That_ was an answer he hadn’t been expecting. “How in the world did you meet her?”

“I was at this party, and the host's kid was in her class last year, and they’d invited her to say thank you for some competition she helped him win.” David’s eyes actually went misty, and Hobson resisted the urge to wave the cane in front of them to see if he was paying attention to his surroundings. David went on, oblivious to the amused smile on his brother’s face. “When you guys meet her, just try to make me look good. I mean, not just _look_ good, but try to make me sound good. Mention my accomplishments. My qualities.”

Hobson raised an eyebrow and David, sensing he was on shaky ground, backtracked. “You can be creative.” When Hobson just kept giving him a look, David gave up. “Lie, okay? She says her mother knows you.”

That was unlikely, Hobson thought. “What's her name?”

David got that soppy look in his eyes again. “Mary Margaret Mills.”

“Mills Industries Mills?” Hobson straightened up like a hunting animal that had caught a scent. If that was true, than David’s Mary Margaret was Regina Mills’ stepdaughter, not her daughter. Regina had become CEO of the company when her husband had died under somewhat mysterious circumstances, and her marriage a few years before that had been…well, gold-digger wasn’t an inappropriate term to describe her, even if no one used it in public. Regina Mills had a reputation for a nasty temper.   

David’s brow was furrowed. “I don’t know. Maybe?”

Beverly Gold finally made her appearance, smartly dressed in a well-cut pantsuit, a white Hermes scarf looped around her neck. “Here's a tough question,” she said, adjusting the lacy cuffs on her flowered silk shirt. “Which one works for a living?”

David snapped out of his reverie and smiled his ladykilling smile. “Nice outfit, Mother.”

“Good morning, blue eyes,” Beverly said, leaning up to give her taller son a peck on the cheek. “Good morning, Maurice,” she said to the chauffer, who had been waiting patiently in the background.

“Good morning, Madame,” Maurice replied, holding the door open for her as she arranged herself in the backseat.

Hobson put his cane and briefcase into the car and looked at David over the roof, already thinking furiously about the implications of his brother dating Regina Mills’ stepdaughter. “Bring her around,” he said to David. “We'll try and make you look good.”

David, who seemed to realize that something else was going on other than his crisis, frowned once more. “You guys work Sundays now?”

Hobson shook his head in faint derision as he lowered himself into the backseat of the car. “It's Wednesday, David.”

Maurice closed the door for him and got the car started up. It always impressed Hobson that the big man managed to fade so easily into the background, but that was the mark of a servant of the old school, and Maurice French was definitely old school. The car engine hummed to life and they pulled smoothly out of the driveway, and Hobson turned to his mother as they settled themselves into the backseat. “David,” he proclaimed, “is seeing Regina Mills’ stepdaughter.”

His mother was no slouch, even if she cultivated a grandmotherly mien to fool other people into complacency. “Well, well, well,” she said, her eyes going sharp. “Isn’t that interesting? What are you planning to do about it?”

Hobson smiled, and his look was equally predatory. He pulled a sleek little cell phone from his pocket and flipped it open, dialing one of his assistants. “Victor, this is Gold. I want you to start buying up chunks of Mills stock. Not so much that anybody would notice. That's it.” Never doubting that his wishes would be promptly and efficiently obeyed, he flipped the phone closed.

Beverly was watching him carefully. “You’d better hope that David doesn’t find out what you’re up to,” she said with amusement. “He may be trying to pull a Prince Charming for this girl, but he’s not stupid.”

Hobson’s mouth quirked in amusement. David, pay attention to anything not wearing high heels and lipstick? “Mother, you know I’m a fan of true love. Particularly if it comes with a profit margin.”

* * *

Hiding from one of his mother’s massive parties was one thing – she seemed to have hundreds of friends who liked nothing more than to come and stuff themselves on her champagne and food – but smaller family affairs he could tolerate. So when David informed him that Mary Margaret Mills was coming for dinner that Friday night, Hobson had much less trouble making an effort to be pleasant.

The fact that there might be a merger in it for Gold Inc. if he impressed Ms. Mills certainly played into it. Regina Mills might be the CEO of Mills Textiles, but young Mary Margaret had inherited a substantial chunk of stock upon her father’s death, and she was a multi-millionaire in her own right. Her word still counted for quite a bit in the company, so he would make an effort to be as charming as David.

Beverly stood with him in the foyer as they waited for David to arrive. “Quit fidgeting with that thing, will you?” she said, casting a glance at his gold-headed cane. “You’ll make the poor girl think she’s about to run the gauntlet.”

Hobson sighed. “With a stepmother like Regina Mills, I doubt there’s much that will disturb Mary Margaret. Relax, mother.”

The front door opened and revealed David, his arm around woman with a sweet round face, flawless ivory skin and black hair cut short. She was smiling at some joke he had just made, and the smile grew wider when she saw Beverly and Hobson. “You must be David’s family,” she said, offering her hand to Beverly. “I’m Mary Margaret Mills, Mrs. Gold.”

Beverly clasped it firmly, turning a friendly but assessing look on the woman while David hovered nervously behind her. “Well, for once David wasn’t exaggerating for his dear old mother – you _are_ lovely. I’m Beverly.”

“Thank you,” Mary Margaret replied, unruffled by the joke at David’s expense. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” She turned to Hobson. “And I’ve heard a lot about you from my stepmother, Mr. Gold.”

He offered her a hand and his most dashing smile. “Please, call me Hobson. I can see I’ll have to be on my best behavior, if all you’ve heard about me was from Regina. I doubt she’ll have painted me in a good light.”

Mary Margaret clasped his hand, smiling with more irony now. “Don’t worry. She and I don’t get along very well either. Actually, I’m looking forward to getting to know both of you better – it seems like David hardly ever talks about you.”

“That’s not true!” David exclaimed. “I’ve told you all about them – haven’t I?”

Mary Margaret sighed and patted him on the shoulder. “Barely enough to fill a gossip column, sweetheart.”

Beverly grinned and began ushering Mary Margaret toward the family dining room. “That’s just because he’s so taken with you, dear.” David trailed along behind, looking like a hopeful puppy, and Hobson brought up the rear, shaking his head at his hopeless brother.

Dinner went smoothly, thanks in no small part to Mary Margaret, who led the conversation and had a surprisingly dry sense of humor. Hobson could have done without the hand-holding that went on all through the meal, but he supposed it could have been much worse – at least they weren’t doing something disgustingly twee like sharing each other’s food or finishing each other’s sentences.

“So,” he said over the last of the wine, “You’re really a teacher?”

“Oh no,” Mary Margaret said, arching her brows mischievously. “David made that up. I’m really a circus performer.”

“She was just promoted to head of the language department at the Trinity School, and I told her that the school could count on us to add a couple of million dollars to their endowment,” David said, beaming at Mary Margaret.

Hobson just barely managed to restrain his moan. This was going to be _more_ expensive than David’s usual flings. Beverly’s mouth had dropped open just a bit, but she still had the presence of mind to shoot a warning look at her older son. “Is he a world-class philanthropist or what?” she said, turning on the polite smile that meant there was going to be some damage control going on later.

“Well, he’s been called worse,” Hobson added with a grin of his own. His brother looked slightly disgruntled at that, but Mary Margaret gracefully rescued the situation with a question about the recipe the cook had used for their savory tomato napoleon.

David took the chance to slip out of his seat and come over to Hobson’s side of the table. “Don’t screw this up for me,” he hissed.

Hobson grimaced, but he knew he’d have to put on a better front, since David had already proved that he’d be more open with this particular woman than any of the ones before her. “Don’t worry,” he said. “She’ll leave here just as enamored of you as she came. You’ve got my word on it.”

David narrowed his eyes, still suspicious, but then Mary Margaret called him over to explain what he’d been doing at some gathering or other that they’d both attended. Hobson pretended to listen attentively to the story, but he was really watching Mary Margaret, who he suspected was not as oblivious to the undercurrents in the room as she pretended to be. She seemed smart, although he found her obvious attraction to his half-brother to be a questionable characteristic at best.

Still, if David hung on to this one, it would be good for the family _and_ the company. Hobson would just have to work a little harder to make the deal he had in mind work for both of them.


	4. Chapter 4

It looked as if David’s relationship with Mary Margaret was going to set a record for longevity. Hobson had kept quiet about buying up Mills stock, but now that it looked like the emotional front was a stable one, he began making overtures to Regina Mills. She was wary but, at risk of estranging her stepdaughter, forced to entertain the possibility of a merger. Still, she insisted on keeping it quiet as well, so he was surprised in the extreme when an irate David showed up at his office during a lunchtime conference.

David, in fact, burst through his door and practically plowed over Victor Dove and Victor Whale, which was no mean feat considering that Dove was over six feet tall and built like a wrestler. “I need to talk to you,” David said angrily, stabbing his finger at Hobson.

Hobson spread his hands and shook his head incredulously. “I'm in a meeting!”

 “When was the last time I came here?” David demanded.

He had a point. “You're right.” Hobson nodded at his assistants. “Victor. Victor.”

The two men quietly took themselves out of the office, and David, who had barely acknowledged them, went on, “I wondered why I was suddenly being treated with so much respect.”

Hobson shifted aside the reports he’d been reviewing in the meeting. “Something bothering you, dearie?”

David ignored the nickname, which Hobson had picked up from friends at school in Scotland and teased him mercilessly with during David’s teenage years. “You’ve been pushing me into this relationship so you could engineer a merger with Mills!”

His brother stood and leaned over his desk. “Pushing you? I could burn in hell for the lies I told about you. You begged me to make you look good in front of Mary Margaret.”

“You never said a word about making an offer to Regina Mills –”

“'Talk about my accomplishments,' you said. 'My qualities. Be creative.' 'Lie,' you said. Am I forgetting something?”

David slapped his hands onto the desk and hung his head. “I can't do this, Hobson. I'm not ready to make this kind of commitment.”

Now it was becoming clear. “Oh, I see,” Hobson said. “She must have asked for an actual wedding date.”

“We were in the stables and she was wearing those tight riding pants and I was showing her the new foal and – and she just hit me with it!  I'm not in any position to take care of a wife.”

Hobson huffed in exasperation. “Mary Margaret is a teacher at an excellent school and a millionaire, David. She won't be a burden. You don't deserve her, but she appears to love you.”

“Doesn't that worry you a little bit?”

“David, this is an opportunity.” Hobson picked up his cane and came out from behind the desk. It was time to start pulling strings, because if David had time to stop and think about the whole arrangement he was going to ruin it. “I’m not going to disqualify myself from a billion-dollar merger because I might have family connections!” He reached the display dummy that was standing off to one side, then lifted the cane and swung it hard at the body armor the thing was wearing.

David threw up his hands and backed away. “What are you doing? It was just a question!”

Hobson gave it another swing for good measure and then stopped, pointing at the thin, rigid sample of Mills body armor. “Look at this thing. Not a mark on it.”

“Is this some new way of changing the subject?”

“No one in the world has material like this,” Hobson said, shaking his cane at David, “except Regina Mills, and the damn stuff’s a military fantasy. She’s sitting on the hottest technology in town and everyone on Wall Street knows it. We've got so much competition on this merger that any advantage – ”

David scowled. “You're talking about my life!” he yelled.

“I pay for your life, David,” Hobson retorted. “My life makes your life possible.”

“I resent that!”

“So do I!” Hobson began pacing to let off some of his anger before he smacked David like he’d used to when they were boys.  “Look at yourself. You changed your college major from agricultural science to veterinary studies to kinesiology and you still didn’t graduate with a degree in any of them! You went to law school. You never took the bar. You went to business school. I can't get you near the office. You have girlfriends you never see more than twice. Do you see a pattern here?”

David wasn’t giving up that easily. “Who are you to lecture me about closeness? You hardly ever leave the office! I bet you haven’t seen your son since Millie took him to Paris!”

That blow struck home; Hobson had indeed not been to Paris since the boating accident. He was too afraid of confronting Millie about taking their son away, too afraid that he’d find a son who hated him for allowing her to uproot him from their home. But he’d never explained his reasoning to anyone, and he wasn’t about to let David use it as ammunition. “I don't have time for pleasure trips. I'm too busy with this company,” he growled. “You're a grown man, David. Finish something. Mary Margaret Mills is the best thing that ever happened to you and you told me so yourself.”

The best way to get David to do anything – at least for a little while – was to insinuate that he wasn’t up to the task. Hobson’s words stung enough that David retreated from his office, so wound up that he couldn’t even spare a wink for Ruby Lucas. The beautiful secretary Hobson’s mother had hired gaped after David, then peered back through the office door. “I’m sorry, Mr. Gold, he insisted on coming in.”

Hobson, who knew very well that Ruby had probably let David in just so she could listen to the resulting fireworks, scowled. Ruby Lucas had a shrewd mind behind her handsome face, and there was a good chance Beverly Gold had recruited her just to move things along. “Just make sure there are no more interruptions this afternoon,” he said sourly. “And have the Victors come back up here in half an hour.”

He firmly shut the door in her face and hobbled back to his desk. It would have been most efficient to have Whale and Dove return immediately, but he wanted the time to settle his nerves. David’s accusation about his son had struck deeper than his brother had realized.

He’d met Millie while they were both at St. Andrews; she’d been focusing on art history, while he was enrolled in the economics and finance program. Their relationship had been brief but intense, blooming over the summer before their final year, and by the time they’d both graduated it was clear that Millie was pregnant.

Hobson had insisted on the marriage, wanting to provide stability for Millie so she wouldn’t have to work through her pregnancy, and she accepted, but it soon became clear that they were ill-suited for each other. Romantic love had been all for the good when they were students, but the demands of Hobson’s business coupled with the difficulties of raising a child made Millie miserable. Even though she loved little Bailey as fiercely as his father, she resented having to give up her scholarly pursuits and the traveling that went with them. When the accident happened, she seized on the opportunity to demand a divorce, claiming Hobson’s absence in favor of business and putting their son in danger through the accident as the cause.

Hobson had been in too much pain, and felt too guilty about putting Bae in danger, to protest at the time. The boy had nearly drowned, and in the midst of a haze of surgical anesthetic and painkillers Hobson had convinced himself that Bailey _was_ better off with his mother. Millie had taken custody and then taken herself and her son to Paris. Hobson had visiting rights, but self-loathing had prevented him from exercising them.

He found himself staring down at the papers on his desk without really seeing them. Bailey sent postcards and letters and drawings all the time – emails too, once he got old enough to use a computer – and Hobson always, _always_ wrote back, but facing his son over paper and in person were totally different things. Paper brought distance, and safety; being face-to-face with Bae would mean working to hide the guilt from his boy.

No, it was better to stay here in New York. The company really did need him, he hadn’t lied about that. There was always something to keep busy with. But if he’d allowed himself to admit that David might have a point, he’d also have to admit that the company would not immediately collapse if he took a vacation.

But there was only one place he could think of to go, and he was too scared to overcome what kept him from getting on a plane to Paris. Too cowardly.

Grimacing, Hobson grabbed his cane and flung it at the display of body armor, which obligingly wobbled and crashed to the floor. He slumped into his desk chair and put his face into his hands for a moment before his phone’s intercom buzzed. _“Mr. Gold?”_ Ruby said. _“Is something wrong?”_

Thank God he’d trained her early on not to barge into his office uninvited. He punched the intercom button and growled, “Nothing, Ms. Lucas. I’ll attend to it.”

_“Yes, sir.”_

He could hear the curiosity in her voice, and a hint of dry irony – she’d cleaned up more than one of his messes and knew better than to comment on it where he could hear. Still, banning Ruby meant he had to find his own distractions, and he still had some time to wait before the Victors returned. They weren’t making much progress on the Mills merger, and he knew that Regina was holding out on purpose just to make things difficult for him.

What to do…Hobson smiled, slowly and wickedly. Perhaps it was time to get everyone together for another family dinner – the _whole_ family.

* * *

In the end, Regina insisted on hosting the thing – probably so she could deal with him on her home turf, as well as show off just how well she was doing nowadays. Hobson had no problem with that, because it gave him a chance to observe the enemy in her element. He’d always found that one could learn more about a business rival from how they acted outside of the office, away from the careful personas and masks they’d built.

By the time the hors d’oeuvres were served, he was enjoying himself immensely. Not because Regina’s ostentatious Upper East Side townhouse had impressed him – the woman had the most ridiculous predilection toward baroque, opulent decoration that he felt like he’d been ushered into a European palace – but because it was abundantly clear that she and Mary Margaret only tolerated each other because they had no choice.

Oh, they smiled, and Mary Margaret put on a cheerful face that he’d bet she also used when dealing with problematic students, and he could practically hear Regina hissing through her teeth whenever she pasted her rictus grin on. David wasn’t totally oblivious to it all, but seemed to have decided to stay out of the line of fire rather than attempt to mediate.

Mundane conversation carried them through the main course, but over the dessert Regina felt the need to force out another social nicety. “I propose a toast,” she said, raising her wineglass. “To my dear stepdaughter, who has finally found her Prince Charming.” She smiled just a little too widely at Mary Margaret and David. “And to David Gold, a lucky man indeed.”

There was an awkward pause during which Mary Margaret narrowed her eyes at Regina, as though trying to figure out if there had been an insult implied. Gold couldn’t resist the chance to take advantage of the moment and held his own glass up a bit higher. “To a well-made deal of the heart,” he said, then glanced at Regina. “Here’s hoping that I can be as lucky in business as my brother has been in love.”

His mother cleared her throat threateningly, but Regina only smiled as she drank the toast. “If your offer is as attractive as your brother, we shall see,” she said silkily.

Mary Margaret’s glare could have frosted glass; apparently she wasn’t under any illusions about Regina’s motives for marrying her father, and any hint that the woman might be making inroads on David would not be kindly met. “If it will do the company good,” she said firmly, “I think it’s a wonderful idea. We’ve wanted to offer an across-the-board pay increase for some time now, and a profitable merger would make that much easier.”

Regina looked like she’d bitten into a lemon, but she managed to hide her obvious displeasure quickly. “Oh, of course. We are always thinking of our employees.”

Hobson had to fight to keep a straight face at that one, and Regina’s poisonous look told him his restraint was failing somewhat. The rest of the meal passed in a veneer civility, with Beverly trying her best to steer the conversation to more neutral ground, David fidgeting under Regina’s thinly disguised leers and Mary Margaret looking ready to put a fork through her stepmother’s manicured hand.

When coffee was finally served, Hobson excused himself to check his phone messages and retreated to the parlor. The room, just as over-furnished as the rest of the house, showed no sign of Mary Margaret’s restrained taste, and he wondered as he listened to his voicemail whether she lived there at all. Most likely not; unless she had a sentimental attachment to the place, Hobson could think of few reasons why she wouldn’t spend her own money to take herself as far away from her stepmother as possible. It was quite obvious there was no love lost between them.

“Enjoying your visit, Hobson?” Regina drawled from behind him.

He turned, thumbing his phone off and slipping it into a pocket. “Oh, immensely, Regina,” he said just as insincerely as she had. “It’s so nice to see David and Mary Margaret enjoying themselves.”

Her arched brow told him she wasn’t fooled, and her lips curled as she draped herself over the arm of a chair. “You’re not here to play happy families, Hobson, and you know it. Your people have been busy this week, negotiating this merger. You’ve put a lot of effort into it, and that…intrigues me. Gold Inc. isn’t experiencing any financial hiccups, is it? Something that might make it _timely_ to make such a profitable deal?”

Hobson laughed softly. “Trying to sniff out my weaknesses, dearie? Don’t bother. I’d be just as happy to make this deal with another company, but I’m also invested in my dear brother’s future. It’s in my best interests as well as his to make sure that we have a stable relationship between us.”

Regina snorted in a most unladlylike way. “You mean you want him to settle down and stop making trouble that _you_ have to pay for afterwards.”

He shrugged noncommittally. “If you like.” In fact that was one of his main motives, but it hinged less on Regina and more on keeping Mary Margaret happy. If Gold Inc. and Mills Textiles were partners, it made it much less likely that he would upset the young heiress with a forced acquisition in the future – and he had certainly considered the idea in the past.

“Yes, well. I’m not convinced that the merger is the best thing for us, no matter what the little princess thinks,” Regina sneered, watching as he paced slowly around the room. “She’s a teacher, after all, not a businesswoman.”

“Oh, I think she’s got a decent grasp of the situation.” He turned, resting both hands on the head of his cane and giving Regina a thin smile. “It’s you I’m worried about. You see, David would be devastated if anything…untoward were to threaten Miss Mills’ position in her company. Or elsewhere.” He watched as Regina’s eyes widened and lips clamped together, and knew he’d called her correctly; he’d suspected that she might have been thinking about ways to push young Mary Margaret out of her inheritance. “You see, I’ve become invested in her future, too.”

Regina stood, her movements brittle and her eyes blazing. “You’re awfully bold, saying something like that to me,” she hissed.

He only smiled. “Just some friendly advice, dearie. Since we’re nearly family now.”

She stalked up to him and thrust her face close to his. “We shall see,” she said poisonously before whirling and stalking back to the dining room and the remains of the dinner party.

Hobson shook his head and clicked his tongue softly at the woman. Regina had always been easy to provoke, and now that he knew what plans had been rattling around under that expensive haircut, he could guard against them. The merger – _and_ the wedding – were both going to happen, no matter what steps he had to take.

* * *

Belle put the last of her technical articles in their box and taped the lid down firmly. She had a week left in Paris, but she was shipping back most of the things she’d acquired in her months here and she wanted them to arrive home around the same time she did. Mostly it was papers from her job and books from the _bouquinistes_ ; the furnishings would stay with the apartment, and the new wardrobe Jefferson and her labmates had talked her into assembling would go with her on the plane.

She’d let them convince her to part with her dowdiest clothing and Jefferson had made good on his gift of a visit to a hairstylist, and she was still adjusting to the fit of her new self-image. Her hair was still brown and curly, but the hairdresser had insisted that the shorter style suited her face more than the long locks she’d clung to since she was a girl, and she’d been too cowed by the fancy salon to disagree with him. She wasn’t unhappy with it, but every so often she found herself reaching for the end of a braid that wasn’t there, and it was occasionally unnerving.

Lots of things had changed over the summer, it seemed. Someone had coached her father into finally writing her an email, and he’d been the one to tell her that David was engaged and planning to be married before the year was out. She’d been shocked at first – David, engaged? – and dismayed, but she’d had the curious feeling that her reaction had been more reflex than anything. She’d always bristled when he showed up with a new woman, and that was how she should feel now…right?

Belle sighed. Even after a whole summer away she still hadn’t sorted out her feelings for the man, and Jefferson had refused to step into the role of lover. Very gallantly, she had to admit, for a man who would flirt with anything female and breathing, but that didn’t make it any easier for _her_ to decide what she was going to do about David when she got home.

Home. After a whole summer of describing the mansion to her new friends it almost _did_ seem like an enchanted castle, and she wasn’t sure how she was going to fit into it now that she’d undergone this odd transformation. Oh, her father would be happy to have her back, but she didn’t really belong there anymore. The trouble was, she wasn’t sure _where_ she belonged. Madame Mal had coolly told her that her work had been ‘most satisfactory’ and that she could expect supportive letters of reference for whatever job she wanted, but that meant she would have to start looking for one.

But where? In the City? She would be just as close to home and David as ever, and now that he was firmly off-limits she knew that wouldn’t be a good choice.

She stopped fussing with her books and sat down at the tiny desk in front of the window. She’d bought a whole slew of postcards at a street vendor that day, thinking she would send them to her friends on the staff back at the Dark Castle, but she’d been putting off writing them for days. Now was as good a time as any to get it over with.

Belle pulled out the biggest card – it was almost a small poster, really, with a picture of the pyramid at the Louvre in the middle of the night, lit up and empty. She’d liked it better than any of the others, which were all crowded with people and looked just like any of a dozen photos she’d taken herself. It was big enough for a proper letter, not just a few pithy lines, and she picked up a fountain pen to tap on her lips as she thought about what to say.

_Dear Papa,_

_I’ll talk to you on the phone before I come home, but I wanted to send something on paper from Paris, since paper is, after all, what brought me here!_

_Time has gone by so quickly. I was terrified of coming here, and now I can’t think how that was ever possible. I love the people and the food and even the language, when I can remember my verb endings!_

_Thomas Jefferson wrote once, “A walk about Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of Life.” I realize now that I was afraid to find the courage to live life on my own terms – to decide my own fate. I spent so long hoping that someone else would decide it for me._

_The café below my flat is playing “La Vie En Rose”. They do it for the tourists, but it’s more than just a song. In Paris, I learned that it_ is _possible to see life through rose-colored glasses. A part of my life may have ended, but I’m not afraid of that anymore. I can be brave. And I’ll always take Paris with me, wherever I go from now on._

_Love you, Papa._

Belle capped her pen and paused for a moment, listening to the last strains of the song drifting up into the air. She hadn’t lied; Paris – and her friends here – had helped her find a kind of courage, but it was going to take all of it to go back home and begin a new life.

Well, the postcard wasn’t going to mail itself. She hunted for a stamp, pasted a few on, then grabbed a coat and her keys and made for the door. There was still time to make it to the post-box and back to the café for a glass of wine before the light faded completely.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear I will get through this one day! One chapter more towards the goal.

It was Beverley’s birthday, which meant the preparations for the birthday dinner were well underway and Hobson had taken to skulking in the shade of the rear portico in order to avoid the flurry of activity in the backyard. The forecast was for perfect end-of-summer weather, which meant the party would be outside; as a result, Hobson was planning on spending as much time as possible _inside_ , though he would naturally have to put in an appearance to deliver the toast before the fireworks.

To his surprise, David strolled up. Things had been a bit strained between them ever since the Mills dinner party – David had somehow got it into his head that Hobson had engineered the whole disastrous thing, and while Hobson was perfectly willing to admit to needling Regina Mills about business, he wouldn’t take the blame for the obviously longstanding feud between Regina and Mary Margaret. “What are you doing here?” he inquired cautiously as David came to lean against a pillar next to him. David generally stayed at his penthouse in the City.

“I drove in with Mother. Have to be here for her birthday party, and I figured I might as well stay over. What did you get her?”

Gifts were not Hobson’s strong point. “New satellite phone,” he muttered, twisting his cane a bit.

David chuckled. “Very sentimental.”

Hobson rolled his eyes. “It's easy for you, Prince Charming. She's so glad you finally set a date that you'll never have to buy another present.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it. Anyway, I got her a little Picasso. I’m having it wrapped in town.”

“You really aren’t taking any chances. What did that cost me?”

David shrugged, his air of nonchalance mocking now. He knew Hobson couldn’t stand his spending habits. “Don’t know. Does it matter?”

Hobson had to chuckle at his brother’s audacity. “I’m sure we can find a way to write it off.”

“So who’s the new bidder making inroads on Mills? Mal Richards’ company?”

Mal Richards was another old business rival – her company was one of the premier aerospace engineering firms in the country, and she would only be too happy to buy up shares in a textile company like Regina’s. It didn’t hurt that she and Regina had attended business school together, either. “And a couple of other companies. Word gets round.”

“Cash or stock options?”

Hobson grinned wolfishly. “I love it when you talk dirty.” Whatever David had been planning on saying was lost in a flurry of uniformed house staff chasing after a colorful blur of feathers that was hopping its way across the yard. Hobson stared after it, appalled at the noise the bird – he assumed it was a bird – was making. “What is _that?”_ he demanded.

David was trying very hard to keep from laughing. “A parrot.”

His brother gaped. _“Why?_ Is it some kind of party decoration?”

“It’s Mary Margaret’s birthday gift for Mother. She’s stuck at a teacher’s conference in Boston and she feels guilty about missing the party. She, ah, has a bit of a thing for birds.”

“What’s Mother going to do with a parrot?” Hobson wondered, having visions of the thing squawking away in some echoing cavernous room of the house and shredding holes in the curtains. “Couldn’t your fiancée have gotten her something more…I don’t know, practical?”

David shrugged. “She only needs one satellite phone. Listen, Hobson, I’ve got to go pick up the painting, but I want you to know that I really am glad about Mary Margaret.”

Hobson gave him a wry look. “You should be. She's smart, independent, beautiful – ”

“Why don't you marry her?” At Hobson’s scowl, David raised his hands, laughing. “I’m kidding. Kidding.”

His brother rapped him on one leg with his cane. “Go pick up your painting before you get attacked by the parrot, David.”

* * *

Belle wrestled her bags out from under the bus with the help of the driver, then tipped him a few dollars from the cash she'd got out of the airport ATM - she didn't think he'd appreciate Euros. The weather was fantastic, warm and sunny and crisp, with the leaves just starting to change, and she smiled as she dug through her shoulderbag to find the oversized sunglasses she'd bought in Paris. Jefferson had insisted that they made her look like a movie star, although she wasn't sure if he'd been teasing or not. Still, they were useful, so she'd gone along with his suggestion.

Nervously she smoothed her hands down the pretty flowered dress she was wearing. That was another change - no more frowsy slacks and button-downs for her, after her Parisian friends had had their way with her wardrobe. In fact, she'd be surprised if anyone even recognized her, between the clothing and the glasses...and her hair. Belle lifted a hand to finger the curls, tinted with red shades and just brushing her shoulders. She hadn't had her hair this short since she was a child, and it still felt odd, surprising her with how light it was.

As she maneuvered her baggage into a more manageable pile on the sidewalk, thankful that she'd at least worn a comfortable pair of shoes instead of one of the heeled ones, she spotted a bright red convertible parked in the bus lane on the opposite side of the median. Expensive little thing, that, but not quite the usual color for the reserved, old-money residents of this neighborhood. In fact...

Belle couldn't hide her smile when she saw the car's owner appear and deposit a wrapped package into the car's tiny backseat. He noticed the parking ticket flapping in the breeze and frowned a bit, reaching for it - and then he spotted Belle. He got that look on his face, the sort of automatic brightening that happened when he saw what he considered to be an attractive woman (and since David was always surrounded by beautiful women, she'd seen him wearing it a lot). But he'd never turned that look on her, and Belle realized that he didn't recognize _her_ \- just saw that she was pretty.

A wicked thought occurred to her, and she decided to see how long she could fool him. The old Belle would never have done it, but she wanted to see if she was really over him now, and this was as good a way as any to 'test' it. She laughed and waved at David. "It's nice to see you," she said mischievously.

His brow furrowed, but he managed a smile anyway. "Uh...it's nice to see you too," he replied.

“I’m surprised to see you here,” she went on. “It’s not your usual scene.”

She really had him confused now, but it was an amiable confusion. “Well, you know me,” he ventured. “Don’t you?”

Belle smiled and started gathering up her bags. “I do.”

David, ever the gentleman, moved to help her, hesitantly reaching for the suitcase she’d begun to pick up. “Can I give you a lift?” he offered, gesturing to his car.

And be seen by everyone from here to the mansion when he was supposed to be engaged to a beautiful and successful woman? “Oh, that’s all right,” Belle said, deferring her game to her common sense. “I’m waiting for someone, although I’m a bit early.”

He gave her his best ladykilling smile, and something in her chest twinged; obviously she wasn’t as over him as she’d thought. Oh dear. “Please, I’d be happy to,” he insisted. “It’s no trouble.”

Well…even if they were seen together, other people were much more likely to recognize her than David was, and they’d know that she was just the chauffer’s daughter, the same girl who’d lived over the garage all her life. Nothing would come of it. “Are you on your way home?”

“Yes,” he replied, looking a little more uncertain.”

“Well, that's convenient. You wouldn't mind?”

“Of course not!” David opened the car door and handed her in, carefully loading her luggage into the backseat – since there was no trunk to speak of – and resettling the large, paper-wrapped package he’d been carrying. He leaped over the driver’s door in a boyish show of exuberance, but started the car calmly and drove at a sedate pace until they were out of town and on the road. “You know, I can't remember the name of your street,” David eventually said, watching her with a furrowed forehead.

Belle gave him a small smile; she’d used to find that vaguely confused expression endearing, but now it left her wishing that David was a little quicker to pick up on the game. She didn’t want it to go too far, after all. “Dusoris Lane.”

“What?” he exclaimed. “That's where I live.”

She tried to hold her wind-whipped hair out of her eyes as he took a curve carelessly fast. “Small world,” she replied laughingly, keeping up the careless façade.

“Big lane.”

Goodness, he really didn’t know that she was the same woman who’d spent her entire life at his home. “You don't recognize me, do you?”

David glanced over at her. “Yeah. Of course I do. You're my neighbor...on Dusoris Lane.”

Belle sighed a little. She’d begun to grow up, but David hadn’t, had he? “And you're David,” she said indulgently.

Out came the smile again. “I sure am. One of the lesser Golds.”

“Oh, in what way lesser?”

He laughed a little himself. “Pretty much every way, but, please, no pity.” She saw something tighten his expression just a little bit – unhappiness? Regret? What in the world could he have to regret? Belle wondered. He didn’t give her a chance to answer, however, reverting back to the easy smile and soft eyes she was so used to. “I could have sworn I knew every pretty girl on the north shore.”

That made Belle snicker. She’d never considered herself pretty – the best she’d hoped for before Paris, was elegant, although her friends there had kept telling her that she shouldn’t be so self-deprecating. But David thought every woman was pretty, so she didn’t take his words seriously. “I could have sworn you took in more territory than that,” she teased back.

David put a hand over his heart and let his mouth fall open in an exaggerated expression of hurt. “Ouch!” –

“Although that was a while ago,” Belle hastened to add. “I heard you're engaged to be married.”

“Oh, yeah, I am.” His expression went a little guilty. “We’re just, uh, very busy people, and it’s been hard to set a date.” He looked over at her and raised his eyebrows. “Come on. Give me one clue.”

Belle smiled, for once enjoying being the one to fluster David, even if she was no longer sure that she wanted to keep his attention. “Oh, no. This is too much fun.”

“Please!”

“There's your driveway.” She pointed with the hand that wasn’t clutching her hair.

David stared at her as if she’d done something miraculous. “I was just gonna say that. Would you…would you like to come by for a drink?”

She hesitated, not wanting his flirtation to go any further. “Maybe just an iced tea.” As they turned into the drive, she could see a line of vans and delivery trucks and just as many delivery people and house staff milling about. “Wow. It looks like you're having a party.”

David pulled his car away from the circular front drive and around to the garage. “Tomorrow night,” he said as the car slowed.

“They have lovely parties here.” Belle smiled to herself as she saw her favorite tree around the side of the garage. Had it really been less than half a year since that last party, when she’d perched in the branches and envied David’s latest paramour? She had difficulty seeing herself doing that now, and she felt a pang of regret for the girl she no longer was.

“Then you've been to them.” David put the car in park and turned himself to look at her, still trying to decide who she was.

“No. But I saw the lights from a distance,” Belle admitted. “What’s the occasion? It's too late for an engagement party.”

He hopped out of the car and came around to open her door. “As a matter of fact, my fiancé is in California this week. It's actually a birthday party for my mother...but you probably knew that.” He grabbed her hand impulsively. “Listen. The party's at 9. Will you come?”

Belle’s breath caught. She did want to, very much, but she knew that he was inviting an intriguing stranger, not her. Not the chauffer’s daughter. But she’d wanted for so long to attend just one of the Gold parties, and this might be her only chance. “Do you really want me to?”

David released her hand and clutched the car door. “Very much. If you'll tell me who you are.”

She opened her mouth, but the sight of Hobson Gold, rounding the corner of the garage, drove the words from her mouth. He barely spared her a glance as he approached, cane crunching on a bit of gravel edging. “Hello, Belle.”

She finally found her voice – at least, a croaking approximation of it. “Hello, Hobson,” she said, lowering her chin and eyes a little in chagrin at being caught out in her game.

David looked dumbfounded. “Belle?”

Hobson paused, leaning both hands on his cane. “Have a good time in Paris?”

 “Y-yes,” Belle stammered. “Thank you.”

“You look all grown up.”

And with one short sentence he put her firmly back in her place, making her feel like a silly child in the face of his urbane worldliness. She could feel herself flushing and knew she’d gone all blotchy, which probably made her _look_ like a child, too.

“Belle?” David repeated, looking from her to his brother.

“Why does he keep saying that?” Hobson gave her a wry look, though she knew it was more because he was too polite to ignore her than because he meant to include her in any kind of conversation.

Belle snatched up her smallest bag from the backseat and backed away, wobbling on her suddenly too-high-heels. “I, uh, need to go find my father,” she muttered. “I'll get my bags later.”

David recovered somewhat and reached for her. “Wait a minute,” he protested.

Oh, no, she couldn’t let Hobson see her play that game anymore. “Thanks for the ride,” she said as she beat a hasty retreat toward the garage.

She didn’t dare look back, but she heard David say “But – ”

“No.” Hobson’s dry tone cut clearly across the distance between them, and when she ducked through the side door to the garage she heard him cut David off with a more irate “No!”

God, she was an idiot. Now Hobson probably thought she was fishing for David and David would think…what? She’d seen that look of sudden infatuation on his face a dozen times before, and she knew that she shouldn’t have any part of it. The door slammed behind her, and she took a deep breath, leaning back against it to steady herself. “It was nothing,” she said to herself. “It was nothing.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case anyone was wondering, this is Belle's party dress: http://www.elle.com/runway/haute-couture/spring-2012-couture/christophe-josse/collection/#slide-17

Belle’s things were somehow scattered all over the living room of the apartment over the garage, even though she’d meant to unpack in her bedroom. But the ‘unveiling’ of gifts had always been a favorite ritual of hers ever since the Golds had started taking her father with them on business trips. He’d always brought back some small trinket or a book, and she had been so excited to be the giver of gifts this time around that she’d barely let her bags touch the floor before she was rummaging through them.  

Maurice had wisely chosen to install himself in his armchair and let her move around him. Belle smiled as she collected the armful of gifts she’d bought for him and brought them over. “For going out,” she said as she wrapped a warm, delicate wool scarf around his neck. “For staying in,” she added, setting a bottle of cognac and a boxed tasting glass in his lap. Finally, she plopped a slouchy beret onto his head, noting with satisfaction that it fit perfectly, even if it looked a bit silly. “For laughs,” she finished, grinning more widely.

Her father smiled himself, reaching up to settle the cap into a more comfortable spot. “They’re lovely, petal. But you shouldn’t have bought so much just for me.”

“I wanted to, Papa. And I did buy things for myself.” She pulled out a garment bag and unzipped it, revealing the rich gold of the gown she’d bought in Paris. She’d gone with Emma and Aurora to designer sample sale, never imagining she’d come back with anything. But the other two women had seen the gown and promptly informed her that she had to get it. (They’d chipped in on the dress and the alterations, too – while Belle’s smalls stature meant she could fit a sample size, most of the models the gowns had been made for were nearly a foot taller than her. This one had hemmed well, but she still needed a pair of dangerously high heels to carry it off.)

Her father cleared his throat as she carefully pulled the layers of silk-satin out of the garment bag and shook them out. “That’s...very pretty.”

“Mmm.” Belle fluffed the bodice and hooked the hanger over the closet. “I hope I can get these wrinkles out before tomorrow night.”

She’d been purposefully vague, but she knew her father had caught her meaning when she heard him stand and set aside her gifts. “Tomorrow night is Mrs. Gold's birthday party.”

Belle took a deep breath. “I know. I've been invited.”

“By who?”

She smoothed another wrinkle out of the gown, still not looking at her father. “By David. Although he didn't know it was me when he invited me.”

Her father sighed. “And now that he knows?”

“I'm still invited,” she said firmly, finally turning to look up into her father’s face. “I know he’s engaged, Papa. I’m not trying to chase him. But I’ve wanted to go to one of those parties all my life, and now I finally have the chance.”

Maurice gave a sad smile before he reached out and clasped her hand between his. “It’s your decision, Belle. I just don’t want to see you hurt. You know that David has…well, problems committing.”

“A short attention span, you mean,” Belle replied. “Yes, I know. I had a lot of time in Paris to think about it. And I think I realize now that I never really wanted David, just…just the idea of him. The idea of a kind and handsome man paying attention to me.” She slipped her hands from her father’s grip. “I’ll just go and…and enjoy the party, and drink champagne, and wish Mrs. Gold a happy birthday.”

Her father squeezed her hand and then released it. “All right. I supposed I can’t tell you to be back before it gets too late?”

“I think I’m a bit old for that. And I won’t turn into a pumpkin at midnight.”

“If that boy doesn’t behave himself,” Maurice grumbled as he watched her try to put the living room back in some sort of order after her burst of exuberant unpacking, “I’ll turn him into pumpkin _soup.”_

Belle snorted with laughter. “It’s good to be home again, Papa,” she said, giving her father a quick hug before grabbing up her gown. “I bet I can get the wrinkles out if I steam it,” she said to herself as she headed for her own bedroom.

* * *

The next evening, as it always was on the night of Gold party, was perfect – just cool enough to keep everyone from sweating through their fancy clothes but not too cold for frozen desserts. Belle swore she could see every star in the night sky, even the ones that were normally hidden by the glare from the City, and she hugged herself in delight as she waited under her old climbing tree.

Finally, a chance to go to a fancy party! She’d been to salons in Paris, since Aurora and Emma had both been enamored of the high-fashion set and cultivated friendships among the clothiers. The fashion crowd _loved_ parties, and Belle had been surprised to find that they enjoyed having people around who didn’t talk constantly of clothing and shoes and makeup. There were always a few glazed expressions if she strayed onto the topic of conservation techniques, but books were common ground and most of the people her friends introduced her to were as well-read as they were glamorous.

Being well-dressed never hurt, of course. Belle smiled to herself as she wobbled a little on her heels. She’d still not quite gotten used to being several inches taller than normal, although it was refreshing – and with this dress, definitely necessary. She brushed her fingers along the single swathe of fabric that passed over her right shoulder to support the bodice, smoothing a fold back into place. The vibrant color reminded her of sunflowers, and she loved the simplicity of the draped design. She’d forgone any jewelry, not that she had anything good enough in gold anyway, and she hoped that the gown wouldn’t be too much for the party. She didn’t want to upstage her hosts.

“You’re here,” a stunned voice said from behind her. She turned to look over her shoulder and found David staring at her, his mouth open a bit in surprise. He was wearing a beautiful slim-cut tuxedo and polished shoes that she knew probably cost as much as a month of her father’s salary, and he looked…well, delicious.

“Yes, I am,” Belle said stupidly. How was it that all the thoughts went out of her head when she saw him looking so handsome? He was _engaged,_ for heaven’s sake, and she had no right to be salivating over him like she used to. But it was an old, old habit, and she suddenly realized just how hard it was going to be to break. _Oh, dear,_ she thought in sudden despair. _This isn’t good._

“You look beautiful,” David said, recovering himself and coming to her side. “Paris agreed with you, didn’t it?”

“I don’t think Paris could disagree with _anyone,_ ” Belle replied, smiling a little as she tried to relax. “You…look good too.”

David offered her his patented lady-killing smile, and his arm for support. “Come on. Let’s go show you off. You’re not nervous, are you?”

She gulped. “No. Yes. I mean, I’ve been to parties before, but not something like this.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll do fine.” They passed through an archway and into the fringes of the partygoers, and David reached out to snag a glass of champagne from a waiter’s tray. “Here. Drink this as quickly as possible and you’ll feel much better.”

In Belle’s experience, alcohol was not a good substitute for actual courage, but hers was failing her in the face of so many…well, _famous_ faces. Every prominent family on the North Shore and a good few of the ones from Manhattan had representatives at the party, and here she was, the chauffer’s daughter playing princess in last season’s gown. She released David’s arm so she could accept the glass and took a hearty gulp of the champagne.

Her reward for hastiness was a nose full of bubbles, and she coughed and sniffled embarrassingly while David patted her on the back. “On second thought, maybe something to eat first,” he suggested. “Come on, those shrimp will be gone before you know it.”

Belle followed David to the buffet table and let him load up a plate with hors d’oeurvres, including the shrimp and an appalling array of caviar. “Oh, that’s a good one,” she said, pointing to a runny-looking cheese that no one else had touched. “I had that kind at a _fromagerie_ on the Rue Mouffetard. It’s called _Brie de Meaux.”_

“Well, we can’t let a famous cheese languish like that,” David joked, transferring a few runny servings to the tiny toasts that had been laid out for the occasion. “I’m sure the kitchen paid a lot for it.”

“I’m sure you can afford it,” Belle teased back. “Did your mother like the painting you got her for her birthday?”

They drifted off to one of the standing tables scattered near the stage for the band and the dance floor. “She accused me of raiding a museum,” David admitted. “But she didn’t have it put in storage, so that’s a start.”

“I’m sure she loved it,” Belle said, popping a shrimp into her mouth and savoring the cool sweetness. “There are so many people here – it’s a wonder she ever gets to speak to them all.”

David shrugged as he selected a caviar-adorned blini. “She manages it somehow. At least long enough to keep up the business connections, anyway. It might seem like she’s talking about lasagna recipes half the time, but she knows exactly which of the family connections needs attention and which ones are just here for the food. She’s like Hobson, only more sociable.”

Belle’s breath caught. “Is Hobson here?” she asked mildly, trying not to seem panicked.

“Of course. He has to put in an appearance for at least an hour or so before Mother will let him escape to talk serious business in the library. He hates it, of course – you should see him squirm when people start talking about the wedding.”

She coughed, and took another sip of her champagne to cover it up. “Right. How, uh…how is the wedding planning going?”

He snorted, an uncharacteristically rude sound for his playboy demeanor. “600 people on the guest list already, and that’s just our side. Mary Margaret has her dress, though, and we figured we’d just let the parents hash out the rest of it on their own.”

“That’s not a wedding, that’s a town,” Belle remarked. She snuck a wary glance at David. “So…does your fiancée know you’re squiring around the chauffer’s daughter?”

He grinned. “She couldn’t be here – had a teacher’s conference out on the West Coast, but I told her this afternoon and she gave us her blessing. She also threatened to feed me to her first-graders if I did anything to upset you, given my…ah…reputation.” His grin got wider at Belle’s obvious surprise. “You think I didn’t realize how it looks that I’m showing up at a party with a beautiful woman who isn’t my fiancée? Hobson practically threw a fit. He thinks I might do something stupid like break off the engagement and run away to Rio.”

Belle finally laughed. “You’re much smarter than people give you credit for,” she said, relieved that David didn’t have dishonorable intentions. “And sneakier.”

David waggled his eyebrows comically. “You don’t get to be a successful Prince Charming without being able to read the subtext,” he said. “White steeds and shining armor just don’t cut it nowadays. Oh, look, there’s Hobson lurking again.” He pointed discreetly to a corner of the wide verandah, where his brother was doing what could only be described as lurking, leaning on his cane and half in the shadows cast by the hanging lanterns.

Belle found herself ducking her head a little, as if she could avoid his notice by making herself smaller – although with a dress like hers, that was a tall order. “It’s probably better if _he_ doesn’t see us together,” she muttered into her glass.

“He really is a stick sometimes,” David said thoughtfully. “He didn’t say anything to you, did he?”

“Oh, no. But I don’t want to upset him.”

“Hah. He could use a little upsetting.” David finished his last shrimp, washed it down carelessly with champagne and offered her a hand. “Let’s have a little fun with him.”

She stared at him like she’d never seen him before…and really, she’d never seen _this_ side of him before, the mischievous younger brother instead of the suave ladies’ man. “What do you mean?”

“Come dance with me. Hobson needs to stop trying to run my life, and it would be a shame not to have at least one dance in that dress.”

Belle bit her lip, not at all sure that was a good idea. Going to the party was one thing, but dancing with a most definitely ineligible bachelor – even when his fiancée knew she’d be doing it – was another entirely. “I don’t know…”

He pulled out the smile again, but this time he winked so she knew he was being smarmy on purpose. “I can’t be Prince Charming without a princess.”

She sighed and let him usher her away from the table. “I’m no princess, David. Just Belle.” But he was already making a beeline for the bandstand, and the leader was coming down to chat with him. _Oh, dear,_ she thought for the second time that night. Well, she couldn’t back out now without being rude. She only hoped she remembered enough dance steps from the days when she’d been recruited for cotillion practice by a _much_ younger David and Hobson.

* * *

Beverly broke off from accepting congratulations from a knot of well-wishers to pull her older son out of his hiding spot. “You’ve got at least an hour left,” she said with a wry twist to her mouth. “Surely you can at least _try_ to be pleasant.”

“They all know that I bite, Mother,” Hobson replied, not quite rolling his eyes. “There are two other companies circling Mills Textiles looking to snap up the deal, and the only thing keeping us in the running is David and the fact that they’re all afraid of me. Two of the CEOs are here tonight. Can’t you just let me go in for drinks with them?”

Though she normally talked with a fierce concentration, his mother wasn’t paying attention to him just at that moment. “Who’s that?” she asked, staring off across the patio.

“Who?”

“The girl with David. Look, you can’t miss the dress.”

She was right; the golden gown was easy to spot. But the woman wearing it was shorter than most, and it took a moment before enough partygoers were out of his line of sight that he could make out her features. “Oh. That’s…”

“Oh, my God,” Beverly interrupted. “That’s _Belle.”_

It was indeed. A very grown-up looking Belle, who was at that moment smiling up into David’s face with her hands on his shoulders. And David, he was faintly horrified to see, was _smoldering_ down at her. He knew the look. “David's known her since she was two years old,” he said slowly, feeling disaster looming over him. David couldn’t ruin this merger and his marriage, he just couldn’t. Not when the Gold family stood to profit so much – _and_ finally get David into a steady and permanent relationship.

Beverly’s mind was on the same track. “She didn't have that dress when she was two years old.”

Hobson took his mother’s arm and urged her toward the dance floor. “Come on. If we don’t do something quickly there’s going to be trouble.”

They had to wait until the band finished the song before the dance floor cleared enough to accost the couple. “Well, Belle,” Beverly called out, beckoning David and the small brunette over. “When did you get back?”

Belle gave a hesitant smile. “Yesterday afternoon. Happy birthday, Mrs. Gold.”

“For a minute I didn't recognize you.”

Hobson watched as Belle blushed and dropped her gaze to her toes – _there_ was the hesitant girl he’d known growing up. “It must be the haircut,” Belle replied in a softer tone.

Beverly wasn’t buying it. “To say the least,” she commented wryly.

David just grinned. “Some surprise, isn't she, Mother?”

Hobson eyed him critically. Something was up, he knew it. But he wasn’t sure if it was David or Belle who was raising his hackles. “She certainly is, son,” Beverly said.

David leaned over to give her a hug and then turned back to Belle. “One more dance,” he said pleadingly. “You promised.”

The blush had spread from Belle’s cheeks to other parts of her that the new dress revealed, Hobson noticed, but she murmured “Thank you for letting me come, Mrs. Gold,” and followed David back to the dance floor with her back straight and her head held high.

“This is bad,” Hobson said, frowning fiercely. “This is very bad.”

Beverly’s look was equally troubled. “Mary Margaret won’t put up with it, that’s for sure. I don’t suppose she’d believe Belle is like a sister to him?”

“Sisters,” her son said gravely, “do not wear dresses like that for their brothers.”

* * *

Belle had managed to maintain her composure until they were on the far side of the dance floor, but then the giggles took her over. “Oh, no, David, this isn’t good,” she said breathlessly. “Did you see your mother’s face? She thought I was going to snatch you right out of your engagement.”

“No, I was watching Hobson. He looked like someone gave him lemonade without sugar,” David replied, chuckling. “I think we’ve shown off enough. Want to go someplace and talk? I really do want to hear about Paris, you know.”

But wouldn’t that look even worse, if she disappeared with him like all the other women? “Not tonight,” Belle said firmly. “I think we’ve done enough damage, even if Mary Margaret does know who I am. I’ll come find you tomorrow, all right?”

The music was ending, and David released her and actually gave a bow. “I defer to your discretion. But at least let me bring you some cake for dessert? Mother will be blowing out the candles soon.”

Belle smiled and made an attempt to curtsey back to complete the joke, although it was ruined when she wobbled a bit on her high heels. “That would be nice, David. Thank you. I think I’m going to go for a walk just now, but I’ll be back.”

He cocked his head in the direction of the house. “I hear the solarium is nice this time of night.”

“Will there be a bottle of champagne waiting?”

His brow wrinkled. “What?”

“You always bring a bottle of champagne when you entertain…guests there. And you put the flutes in the back pocket of your jacket, and the band plays something romantic.”

David stuffed his hands into his suit pockets and flapped them at her. “I stopped doing that with the glasses when everyone started wearing these slim-fitting numbers. Besides, what if I sat on them?”

“That wouldn’t be good at all,” Belle agreed. “Go on. Your mother’s probably wondering where you are.”

He gave her a wave, and she slipped away from the dance floor and retreated gratefully onto one of the shadowed pathways through the garden. The dancing had been nice and David had been refreshingly honest, but she wasn’t at all sure that he was telling her the truth when he said he was just playing a game to tease his brother. His eyes had sparkled just a little too much.

Belle bunched her hands in her gown’s heavy skirt to hold it up off the ground as she walked slowly toward the solarium. “Time to wake up,” she said firmly to herself.


	7. Chapter 7

As soon as David returned to the dance floor – without Belle, Hobson was happy to see – his brother took him by the arm and steered him into the sitting room that looked out on the veranda. Beverly was already waiting there, eyes narrowed and arms crossed, and it was obvious that David was in for a chewing-out. “Got a minute?” Hobson growled, almost shoving David along.

“I was going to get some cake for Belle,” David said reproachfully.

“Cake can wait.”

“But – ”

“That cake is big enough to feed most of the North Shore. There will be some left for you to eat later – _alone._ ” He swung open the glass-paned door and pushed his brother inside, then shut the door firmly and stood in front of it with his cane held at arms. “David, what are you doing? Are you insane? Do you have any idea what will happen if your prominent and paranoid future mother-in-law finds out you’ve been hustling the chauffer’s daughter?”

David groaned and flopped down on a fainting couch. “We were _dancing_.”

“Not anymore, you’re not,” Beverly said, frowning ferociously. “What about Mary Margaret?”

“She _knows,_ Mother! Can’t I have a drink and a dance with an old friend without running the gauntlet?”

Beverly sighed and rubbed her forehead. “Do I look stupid? I never thought of myself as stupid, but maybe I am.”

“I didn't do anything wrong,” David protested.

“You were planning to!”

“I was doing it to bother Hobson,” her son retorted. “He’s so ridiculously worried that I’ll screw up his perfect merger that I couldn’t resist. You don’t really think I’d cheat on Mary Margaret, do you?” He took in the expression on his mother’s face. “You do!”

Beverly scowled and pointed her finger at him. “Listen here, David. I endured twenty-one hours of hard labor to bring you into the world. The doctors begged me to take drugs, but I kept saying I wouldn't do anything to hurt my child. Well, I've changed my mind. You screw up with Mary Margaret, and I'll kill you.”

David got up from the chair and put his hands on Beverly’s shoulders. “Mother. I swear I am not falling in love with Belle. I will not call off the wedding and run away to Rio with her. I just wanted to be nice. She’s become…I don’t know. Something. Sensational.”

“The last time you found someone sensational,” Hobson accused, “it cost the family a million and a half dollars.”

“Which went to a perfectly legitimate charity,” David said, turning to face him. “Katherine was big enough to tell me that she was going back to her old boyfriend to help him adjust to being paralyzed after his car accident, and I thought it would be a nice gesture to contribute to that Christopher Reeve foundation.”

“Well, with Mary Margaret there’s more at stake than a charity donation. You’ve finally found the right woman – ”

“Who's got the right stepmother who owns the right company.”

“You asked her to marry you.”

“Actually, she asked me! And I’m _still_ going to marry her.” David poked Hobson in the chest. “You just can’t take me seriously. Neither of you can.”

Hobson looked down at the finger, then up at David, and his eyes narrowed dangerously. “Mother, go outside and blow out your candles.”

It was Beverly’s turn to frown. “What do I look like, the big bad wolf? I’ll blow out my damn candles when I see fit.”

“I want to have a _talk_ with David, Mother, and it would be better if you weren’t here.”

She looked her sons up and down, then shook her head. “Fine. Keep the bruises under cover and don’t mess up each other’s clothing too much.” With one last tug on her dress she stalked out of the lounge and went back to her guests, a toothy smile spreading over her face as she greeted several well-wishers.

Hobson put himself between David, who was edging after her, and the door. “Now. Belle has lived her whole life above that garage with her nose pressed against the glass or in that tree, watching us at parties. Now you invite her to one.” He punctuated his words by shaking his cane in David’s face. “You're in your Rolex jacket or whatever. You tell her to meet you in the solarium. She knows you'll show up with a bottle of champagne, and she knows what’s coming. The jet to Martha's Vineyard. The cottage full of food and flowers. House seats to some sold-out show. Drinks at the Carlyle. A day or two of that, she'd fall for Rumpelstiltskin!”

David had the gall to laugh in his face. “Is that what you think I’m going to do? Give me a little credit, Hobson. I’m in love with Mary Margaret, not Belle.”

“It didn’t look that way from my standpoint.”

“Then maybe you need to look harder.”

David tried to push past Hobson to get back to the party, but Hobson used the cane to block him. “I’ll make a deal with you, David,” he said. “I’ll go pay attention to Belle so it doesn’t look like you’re getting involved with her, and you go help Mother blow out her candles.”

David’s lips twisted in dislike. “And what do I get out of this deal?”

“I won’t withdraw our donation to Mary Margaret’s school.”

His brother pulled back in consternation. “That’s really low, Hobson.”

Hobson lowered the cane. “Little as you might want to believe it, I’m invested in your future, David. Beverly’s right – don’t screw this up.”

David sighed angrily. “Fine. Fine. But I promised Belle I’d bring her some cake, and I’m bringing her some cake.” He sidestepped Hobson and pushed open the veranda door.

“David!” Hobson protested, but his brother was already a step ahead of him. Cheers were rising from the partygoers and the first of the fireworks had gone off, and he guessed that Beverly had just blown out her candles. “David!” he called again, taking several long strides that caused his leg to protest bitterly.

He couldn’t catch up with David, but he could still stop him. Hobson leaned forward and hooked the head of his cane around David’s ankle and yanked, and his tall younger brother toppled sideways with a yelp – right into a rosebush.

_“Hobson!”_ David cried as he struggled to extricate himself from the thorny branches. “What’s – OUCH – wrong with you? OW!” There was a tearing sound and a gasp as several of the partygoers looked away from the fireworks to see the drama going on behind their backs. _“Shit, Hobson!”_ David howled as the bush collapsed under his weight with a nasty crunch.

Somehow – he didn’t know how – Hobson managed to keep a straight face as he went to help his brother. “Don’t struggle, you’ll only make it worse.”

“Boys!” Beverly exclaimed in appalled tones, parting the crowd of guests to take in the fracas. “What are you _doing?”_

“I’m bleeding!” David protested as he wisely stopped trying to fight the bush, holding his arms out like chicken wings. Bits of bark and a few stray rose petals and not a few broken thorns showered down around him, and he had a pained grimace on his face.

Hobson offered David the end of his cane and braced himself to lever the younger man upright. “Someone go get Dr. Hopper,” he ordered. “He's at the bar.”

“Who dumped David into my prize rosebush?” Beverly asked dangerously as she watched the two men struggle to get David upright without further incident.

“Mother, I’m bleeding. Could we talk about this later?” David winced when he finally got his feet under him, and then he suddenly straightened and ground his teeth together. “I need to get inside _right now.”_

From the look of it, thought Hobson with satisfaction, something had ended up in a tender part of David’s anatomy. Well, Hopper would sort it out, even if his family medical practice tended more toward dispensing advice than actually performing medical procedures.

“Oh, my God,” Beverly said as she rushed to open the patio door for David. “Just go in. Elevate something. Hobson – ”  

_That_ was a warning tone if he’d ever heard one. “I’ll go find Hopper,” he said, backing away from the scene. The doctor was already making his way to the house, though, so Hobson waited until the physician was ushered in before making his escape through the gardens. He’d dealt with David; now it was time to finish the job.

* * *

 The solarium was a lovely space in the daytime, but Belle especially appreciated how peaceful it was at night. There were a number of night-blooming flowers growing amid the lush green foliage, and she leaned down to stroke the luminous petals of an orchid. It had no smell, of course, but the petals felt lovely and she couldn’t resist touching it.

There was a step behind her and she turned quickly, a smile spreading across her lips – and then abruptly freezing. It wasn’t David but Hobson, who she least wanted to see. _Here it is,_ she thought dismally. _He’s been sent to deal with me. Or he brought himself. I knew this game of David’s wasn’t going to turn out well._

“You’re upset,” Hobson said, using his cane to brush a trailing vine out of his path.

Belle felt her back straighten under his scrutiny. She would _not_ let him make her feel like a scruffy schoolgirl; she was a woman, with a vocation and skills enough to be proud of. “I was expecting David,” she said neutrally. “And cake.”

Hobson smirked, that smile of his that meant he found the whole situation – and her – amusing. “He had a slight…accident.”

Belle’s lips parted in surprise. “An accident? What happened? Is he all right?”

“He fell into a rosebush.”

“A _rosebush?”_ She stared at Hobson. “How on earth did he manage that?”

If her gaze hadn’t dropped to his hand, she might not have seen it tighten on his cane. Briefly, but it did, and she had the sneaking suspicion that his brother had somehow been involved. “He has his clumsy moments,” Hobson replied lightly. “He just needs a couple of stitches. He’ll be fine. You can see him tomorrow.”

Belle fingered the skirt of her gown. “Then what are you doing here?”

He closed the last few steps between them and offered his arm, as though she needed the support or an escort. “David sent me.”

She looked at the offered arm, then took a step back. “To deal with me, right?”

He watched her out of dark, inscrutable eyes. “Deal with you, dearie?”

“Like a lawyer in a movie. He goes to the unsuitable waitress, or showgirl or…chauffeur's daughter and says the family is prepared to offer you suitable compensation to stay away from their son.”

“Ah.”

“And she refuses,” Belle plunged on, feeling her ire rise at his blandness, “and he offers more, and more. And she says that money can’t take the place of love.”

His expression finally broke, and she saw a wry smile curve his mouth. “Love, is it then?”

“With David?” She shook her head, then turned away. “No. I expect he told you that, too. I…I’ve loved him all my life. But in Paris I realized that what I loved was the illusion of David, not who he really was. And,” she added, “I know quite well that he’s engaged.”

She turned back to look at Hobson, who was being uncharacteristically quiet. “And now you’re going to pack me off somewhere so I don’t embarrass the family anymore, is that it? Keep me away from David and his fiancée so there’s no scandal for the tabloids?”

Hobson raised a brow. “You’ve hardly done enough for a scandal. In fact…it's as though a lovely breeze has swept through this whole house.”

It was time for a wry smile of her own. “Even though the breeze comes from the general direction of the garage?”

“It's the twenty-first century, Belle.”

“Even on the North Shore?” The orchestra had started up again, a soft, gentle tune that she couldn’t quite make out. She sighed just a little. “The dancing was lovely,” she said, almost to herself.

All at once, Hobson was standing in front of her, reaching for her waist and offering his hand. “Would you like one more dance?”

To her embarrassment, Belle gaped at the astonishing turn of events. “I’ve never seen you dance.”

Hobson slid his hand around her and clasped her fingers in his other hand. “I have a few hidden talents,” he said, guiding her into a slow sway before she realized what he was doing. “And is it impossible to believe that I want to dance with the prettiest girl at the party?”

Something in his tone made her skin prickle with suspicion. “Thank you,” she said carefully. “Yes, it is impossible to believe. I’ve never known you to be a flatterer.”

He chuckled, and leaned in so he was a little closer to her ear. “So suspicious,” he said quietly. “Good girl. As it happens, I am hoping to make a deal from this.”

She pulled away, surprised. “With me? I’m not a businesswoman.”

“It’s not that kind of a deal.” He stopped, but kept his hands where they were, and the warmth of them was distracting. “It will need to look as if I’ve warned you off, Belle. For the sake of the guests,” he said, waving an arm in the direction of the party, “and those tabloids you mentioned. Ogres, the lot of them, but I can’t jeopardize the merger with the Mills family company. You’ll need to be…removed from the picture.”

Belle’s heart sank. She’d been so happy to come back to her home here, and now he wanted her to leave again? “What do you mean?”

“That I’m in need of a caretaker for the library in our cottage on the Vineyard. It’s got a rather large collection of rare books there that could do with restoration. Just until David’s wedding. After that everyone will forget what happened before, and you can come back here as you wish…or not.”

She met his gaze squarely. “And if don’t go along with your plan?”

He shrugged. “Your father _is_ getting on in years. It wouldn’t be fair for us to keep him on if it’s time he thought about retiring somewhere else.”

Belle gasped in shock, and then she’d yanked her hand from his and it collided with his face in a good hard slap. “Oh!” she exclaimed, backing away. “Oh, I…I shouldn’t have done that.” What if he took his revenge on her father for what she’d done? She couldn’t get her father fired; he loved his job.

But Hobson, far from being angry, looked amused as he rubbed the mark on his face. “No, that was crude of me. I’m not usually so…” He turned away without finishing and retrieved his cane once more.

She stood there awkwardly, waiting for an apology, but it seemed one wouldn’t be forthcoming. “It’s getting late,” she finally said, fidgeting in her too-tall shoes.

“Yes.” He looked back at her, once more the inscrutable, intimidating man in an expensive suit. “You’ll see David tomorrow if you wish.”

It was clearly a dismissal, and she gratefully took it as such. She didn’t know what to make of Hobson; one minute he was being polite, even charming, and the next he went and delivered one of those devastating blows of his. She was just turning to go when she heard him clear his throat, and she paused halfway, trying to school her own features into inscrutability. “Yes?”

“I hope you will…consider the offer. I’ll leave your father out of it, but it would save everyone a good deal of grief if this didn’t leak to the press.”

Belle lifted her chin defiantly. “I’ll think about it.”

Hobson nodded. “Good night, Belle.”

She decided not to give him a pleasantry she didn’t feel, and left in silence.


	8. Chapter 8

Hobson spent the next morning in a haze of frustration. David having a fling while engaged would have been disastrous, but Hobson had only meant to scare Belle off, not become as taken with her as his brother had seemed to be. A few moments of dancing shouldn’t have affected him, but something about the feel of Belle pressed close to him, the way she met his eyes boldly instead of her old habit of shrinking away…It had unsettled him so much that he’d completely bungled the conversation. Threatening to fire her father had been a clumsy move, not at all like him. Something about her put him completely off-balance.

David, fortunately, hadn’t noticed. He’d been too drugged on the painkillers Hobson had bullied Hopper into giving him, and at this rate, it would take True Love’s Kiss to wake him up. Hobson needed the time that would give him to sort out what was going to happen with Belle, and he couldn’t do that with an angry younger brother accusing him of meddling.

One thing was certain, he couldn’t go into work and deal with the upcoming merger until he’d sorted the situation – and himself. Regina was bloodthirsty, and the minute he showed any sign of weakness she would be on him like a shark and the merger would be doomed. And he really wanted this deal. Not just because of the money, he had plenty of that and it was easy to make more, but because it would put Regina back in his control.

Not many people knew it, but Regina Mills had actually begun her business career under _his_ management. She’d stayed behind the scenes for years, learning all she could and digging constantly for more, until he’d realized that she was headhunting his best management and quietly planning to take over Leopold Mills’ business (and his life, via marriage). Hobson acted swiftly, arranging her speedy departure, _alone_ , and making it abundantly clear that he knew enough about her plans that he – and his lawyers – could make her life hell.

But that was in the past, and he was concerned with the present. And it was in his best interest, right now, to make sure that the affair a la Belle stayed out of Regina’s clutches.

Fortunately, he had good employees to fall back on. “Ruby, I’m going to stay out here for the next few days,” he said into his cell phone, listening to the clicking on the other end of the line as his secretary’s hands maneuvered her computer’s mouse and keyboard. She might take delight in prying into his private life, but Ruby Lucas could plan an international trip down to the minute and still keep up on all the gossip in multiple divisions of the company. “Cancel whatever meetings I've got and reschedule.”

_“Right, Mr. Gold. Will you be needing anything sent out to the house?”_

Hobson hesitated. Before he could do anything else, he needed to make sure Belle wasn’t going to upend it all, and that meant he would have to make up for his misstep last night. And he hadn’t been lying about the books; he knew every bit of his family’s extensive collections, and the ones in Massachusetts really were in need of attention.

“Yes,” he said, making up his mind. “Have the plane stand by for nine tomorrow morning and set up the Vineyard cottage.”

_“Set up, sir?”_

He grimaced. “Stock the fridge, fresh flowers, that sort of thing. Call David's secretary. It's the only thing she ever does.”

Hobson didn’t hear any snickering from the other end, but knowing Ruby, she’d just covered the speaker on the phone. _“No problem. Is that all for now?”_

“For the moment.” He thumbed the phone off and slipped it into his jacket pocket, then went to find his mother. Even though she had a crew of expert chefs at her disposal, still liked to spend time cooking for her family, and he found her in the kitchen, up to her elbows in a huge bowl of ground meat. “Meatloaf,” she explained, puffing a little when he wandered in.

Hobson hung his cane on the edge of the marble counter and leaned his elbows on it. “I wonder if I should go talk to Belle,” he said, not exactly making a question of it.

“And say what?” Beverly asked, her hands still mixing the meat. “Belle, you're very lovely, but sometimes David has the attention span of a puppy.”

“That’s what I’m worried about. What if he does call off the engagement?”

His mother gave him a look. “It’s possible he was telling the truth about Belle, you know. And while he is commitment-phobic, Mary Margaret doesn’t seem like someone who will put up with his dithering.”

His mother was probably right, but Hobson didn’t want to take any chances. “Still.” He watched for a moment while she shaped the ground meat into loaves on a baking sheet. “When is Mary Margaret due back?”

“Thursday. Should we try and get her back sooner?”

“No, people will notice and that’s the last thing we need. Leave it to me.” He took up his cane and tugged on his jacket to smooth it. “This all happened in twenty-four hours; I can make it unhappen in forty-eight.”

Beverly looked up at him sharply. “Don’t make it unhappen at Belle’s expense. It’s not her fault David doesn’t think things through.”

Hobson held up a hand placatingly. “Belle can hold her own, mother. And I like her – I always have. But I'm not about to kiss off a billion dollar merger. I don't care what she did to her hair.”

* * *

Belle smoothed her blouse unnecessarily as she dithered in the front hall of the mansion. She knew where David’s room was, and she knew she wasn’t unwelcome in the house – she’d had the run of the library since she’d learned to read – but something was keeping her from climbing the long staircase to the upper floors.

No, that was an evasion. She knew full well that it was the chance she might run into Hobson. After last night, she wasn’t sure whether to go on being terrified of him, or intrigued. He’d danced with her…but then he’d gone and offered her a deal that she couldn’t refuse, not if there was any chance he’d make good on his threat.

She couldn’t jeopardize Papa’s job. It would kill him to leave it, and he couldn’t afford to lose the financial stability. The Golds had always paid him well, but he’d never had a head for finance and his retirement funds weren’t so generous that he could afford to draw on them now.  

David’s little joke had gone much too far, and she’d been imprudent to allow it. She’d just have to go see him and make him see that it had to stop. Belle fisted her hands and started to take a step toward the stairs –

“Good morning,” Hobson said from behind her. Belle just barely managed not to jump, but her heart was racing when she turned around to find David’s brother watching her. His expression was remote but not unpleasant: his business face. It didn’t leave her many clues to his mood.

Belle licked suddenly dry lips. “Good morning,” she murmured, still frozen with one foot half raised.

Hobson inclined his head toward the upper floor. “I'll take you up to see David.”

“Thank you,” she replied automatically as she forced herself back into motion. Hobson’s footsteps were soft as he followed her upstairs. “Is he feeling better?”

The dryness was back in Hobson’s voice again, though she didn’t quiet dare to turn around to see if it was on his face as well. “There were a lot of thorns to remove, so Doctor Hopper gave him a sedative to help him sleep. I haven’t checked to see if he’s woken up from it yet.”

David’s room was surprisingly small, given the size of the house, although he hardly spent any time in it anymore. It was attended by a uniformed nurse, a grim-looking woman with an antiquated winged hairstyle. She raised an eyebrow at the visitors, but didn’t bother engaging them in conversation; apparently she was merely there for convenience and not to guard the invalid’s rest.

Hobson opened the door for Belle and ushered her in; she found David facedown on the mattress, half-covered with sheets but with only a pair of loose pajama bottoms on. His back was covered in scratches and puncture wounds smeared with antibiotic cream, and she made a noise of sympathy as she circled the bed to sit in a chair that had been drawn up by the far side. “Oh, David, look at you. Can he hear me?” she asked Hobson as she put her hand on David’s arm.

His brother shrugged, but David was already opening his eyes and smiling, although the effect was ruined a bit by the fact that his head was mostly buried in a pillow and it looked as though he’d been drooling. “Hey,” he said, eyes crinkling.

“Hey,” Belle replied, wondering that her heart didn’t leap like it used to. Maybe she really was getting over him. “How do you feel?”

David screwed up his face in fierce concentration. “Fluffy. No…meant fuzzy. All fuzzy. ‘S nice.”

She didn’t quite know what to say to that. “I, uh, heard what happened.”

He grinned. “Crunch! Right inna…right inna bush. Lost my balance and whoop! Right over!” He tried to gesture with one hand and succeeded only in jamming his fingers into the headboard.

“Don’t do that,” Belle said, trying to get him to stop waving his hand. “I feel awful, David. I shouldn’t have asked for that cake.”

David’s eyes widened and he nodded solemnly. “I know. I feel awful too.” He twisted to look up at his brother. “Did you have any cake, Hobson?”

Hobson had been watching with the faintest of smiles on his lips. “You're falling a wee bit behind here, David.”

Belle didn’t quite dare glare at him, but she could tell he wanted to laugh at his brother. “Do you want me to stay with you?” she asked David, patting his hand.

Hobson moved then, coming around the side of the bed and urging her up out of the chair. “Listen, we hired a lovely nurse and there’s a two-day supply of blue Jell-O. He really should rest, Belle.”

She gave in; whatever David was on, it was making him loopy enough that the conversation wouldn’t be terribly stimulating if she stayed. “All right,” she said, subtly shaking off Hobson’s hands and heading for the door. “Get some rest, David.”

David was already asleep again, it seemed, because there was no reply. Hobson followed her out and gently shut the door behind him. “Don’t worry. I’m sure he’ll be more…coherent next time.”

Belle stopped at the top of the stairs and looked up at him. “And is there going to be a next time? I thought your job was to keep me away from him.”

For a moment, a strange look flitted across Hobson’s features, but he masked it so quickly that she questioned whether she’d seen it at all. “No. And it was uncouth of me to assume that you would try to break up David’s engagement,” he said quietly. “Look, I wasn’t lying when I said that the Vineyard cottage’s library needs looking after. Would you still be interested in the job?”

She lifted her chin stubbornly. “That still sounds like you’re trying to get me out of the way.”

His mouth quirked. “It does. But think of it this way – journalists are a tiresome lot. If they decide to make a story of this and you’re away from here, David and I will be the only ones who have to deal with them. Besides,” he added, “I’ve seen you in this library often enough. I know how much you love books.”

Something in her softened just a bit, knowing that he’d noticed. And she found it hard to resist the offer of a library that was hers to order. “How long must I stay away?”

Hobson smiled then, a real smile. “It’s not going to be forever. Just until the wedding is over and the invading hordes disperse.”

Her heart gave a pang as she realized that she would be banished from the festivities, but maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. She’d loved David for so long that seeing him at the altar _would_ be a blow, even if her head knew that she wasn’t really in love with him anymore.

“I’ll take you today, if you like,” Hobson offered. “The helicopter could pick us up here, and the plane’s at Republic. It would be no trouble.”

Years of living in the shadow of the Golds’ wealth had inured her to being shocked by such ostentatious displays, but she couldn’t help smiling at his comment. “No trouble indeed,” she said, half to herself. “I’d like to see the library before I agree to your deal, Mr. Gold,” she added. “It might be beyond my capabilities alone.”

“Of course.” He moved so he was out of her path to the stairs. “A day trip, then. In…say, an hour?”

She nodded. “I’ll go get my things.”

At the end of the promised hour she was fitting muffling headphones over her ears as the helicopter lifted off the back lawn; in half an hour more she was preceding Hobson up the stairs of a small, sleek jet and settling into a plush leather seat while the lone flight attendant fussed over her. Belle buckled the seatbelt with a tiny sigh of relief, happy to be relatively stationary after such a whirlwind of activity.

Hobson must have been paying close attention to her, because he gave her a wry look as he leaned back in his own seat. “It saves all that time fighting traffic.”

 _And doing it with my father in the front seat,_ Belle thought to herself but didn’t dare say out loud. Papa would be happy enough that she was getting away from David, but she wasn’t sure how he’d feel that Hobson was now paying attention to her. And after he’d made that threat to her father’s job…no, she didn’t want to be caught between them. There was too much potential for awkwardness.

“Something to drink, Miss French?” the attendant asked, leaning over her shoulder.

Belle jumped a little, not used to anyone waiting on her. “It’s just Belle,” she said, biting her lip before remembering it was a habit she was trying to give up.

“Oh, what a beautiful name!” the woman exclaimed. Hobson cleared his throat meaningfully, and the attendant subside. “Sorry, Mr. Gold. Can I get you something?”

“Tea, Astrid.”

“The same, please,” Belle added. She’d never cared for sugary drinks or coffee, and it was intriguing to find that the high-powered executive favored tea as well. Of course, that might have been because of his time in Scotland, but still…

As Astrid disappeared into the curtained area at the rear of the plane, Belle looked back at her traveling companion. He had his cell phone out and was interrogating one of his underlings, but he finished quickly and turned his attention back to her. “So,” he said, tucking the phone into a pocket of his coat, “Belle is a beautiful name. How did you get it?”

She smiled. “My mother. She loved fairy tales, especially reading the original versions, and her favorite was de Villeneuve’s _La Belle et la Bête._ ”

“Oh, that’s sweet!” exclaimed the attendant, who was grinning as she came back with the tea.

“Astrid,” Hobson grumbled warningly, plucking his cup from the tray.

Astrid, obviously used to his moods, just wrinkled her nose and set Belle’s tea on the wide arm of her seat before vanishing into the back of the plane again. Belle cupped her hand around the tea to keep it from shifting as the plane began to taxi down the runway. “This is a very nice airplane,” she said, trying for a neutral topic of conversation while the scenery outside accelerated past the windows. “Do you enjoy flying on it?”

Hobson glanced up from his tea. “Enjoy?” he asked, as though the concept were completely foreign.

“Yes, enjoy. Don't you ever look out the window?”

He absently stroked the pocket where he’d deposited his phone. “I rarely have the time,” he said.

The plane rose into the air so smoothly that it barely made ripples on the surface of their tea. It was curious, Belle thought, but trapped in a small plane with only him and the pilot and the attendant, she felt more composed than she had when he’d confronted her at the party. There was something different about him here, more…unguarded. Distracted, even. Emboldened and amused by the revelation that Hobson Gold might actually be a normal human being underneath it all, she quipped, “What happened to all that time we saved taking the helicopter?”

“I’m saving it up.”

 _That_ was a lie if she’d ever heard one. She looked at Hobson – really looked at him, for maybe the first time – and saw past the terrifyingly competent businessman to something else. She knew so much about his life, but until now she hadn’t realized that she didn’t _know_ him. There had been regret in his voice just then, and the lines of his face had seemed just a bit deeper. “I don’t think you are,” she said, surprised at her own daring.

He glanced at her sidelong, and she caught a flash of amusement in his eyes. He _liked_ that she’d challenged him. “ _Beauty and the Beast,_ eh?” he said, changing the subject abruptly. “You’re fond of fairy tales?”

“Of anything.” Belle lifted her cup and took a deep sip of the cooling tea. “Books are…they’re magical. There’s no opportunity for anyone to be a fairytale hero in this world anymore, but getting lost in a story is almost as good.”

“Paris must have been quite the adventure for you, then.”

She laughed, not a bit at herself. “I was terrified,” she admitted. “Such a big place, and I could hardly speak the language. But I figured that I’d be brave about it, and bravery would follow.”

“Hm.” He reached to the side of his seat, where he’d stowed his cane in a pocket, and twisted it back and forth. Belle found herself watching his hands. She’d never really thought of him as a fidgeter, but his hands had been in motion the whole time they’d been on the plane, playing with his phone or the teacup or simply accenting his words as he spoke. They were lovely hands, too, well-proportioned and slender as the rest of him. Hands that ought to belong to a musician or a poet, not a businessman.

They fell into a surprisingly comfortable silence until the plane landed and they were descending the stairs to meet the car he’d hired for the day. She’d never been to Martha’s Vineyard before, and she was surprised by how tiny the island was; it took only a few minutes to drive from the airport to Edgartown, where the ‘cottage’ was. Cottage was, of course, a misnomer. The grey-shingled house was big enough for _two_ families, though of course by the standards of the Golds and their friends it was a modest dwelling.

The house had been aired out recently and it smelled pleasantly of sea air. Someone had placed several fresh flower arrangements on tables throughout the place, and Belle wondered who had gone to all that trouble just for a visit. But she put the thought from her mind when Hobson opened the double doors that led to the library.

Belle made an involuntary sound of longing. The room had obviously been intended as a sunroom of some sort, but the large windows that broke up three of the walls had been covered with semi-sheer curtains that dimmed the natural light to a pleasant glow. The rest of the wall space was covered in shelves, with the exception of a venerable old roll-top desk tucked into a back corner. Overstuffed leather chairs were scattered about the room and flanked by floor lamps and tables sturdy enough to hold the weight of at least a few books.

And the books! As soon as she walked in the room the slightly musty scent of old, high-quality paper filled her nose. There was no underlay of book mold, though, and she could see a small dehumidifier humming quietly in the space under the desk. It might be empty when summer was over, but this place was certainly not neglected.

Belle chose a shelf at random and ran her fingers reverently over the books. There were real treasures here, she found, but they were in desperate need of ordering; a battered collection of Greek plays that looked to have been someone’s schoolbooks shared space with barely-touched but ancient tomes of Dickens and Browning, and could that be a _first-edition_ copy of _Tom Sawyer?_

“This is amazing,” she said when she’d had a look over the room and discovered dozens of other gems peppered throughout the collection. “Whose books are these?”

Hobson glanced over the shelves, leaning on his cane near one of the windows. “My mother’s, and her mother’s, mostly. I’ve added a few over the years, but I come here so rarely…” He trailed off, though Belle was lost in her own thoughts and didn’t notice it immediately. “At any rate,” Hobson went on, “no one’s ever inventoried or organized them, and I’m sure there are a few that could do with some repair.”

It was a librarian’s dream, although Belle had her doubts as to whether she was confident enough to attempt any serious restoration projects. “I can’t believe you don’t come here,” she said as she took down a stunning copy of Spenser’s _The Faerie Queene_ and gently riffled the pages. “It’s such a lovely place.”

Hobson had turned away from her and used the head of his cane to pull aside one of the curtains. “I used to come here,” he said absently. “Now…I suppose it’s because I don’t have anybody to share it with.”

Belle flinched a little, realizing what her question must have sounded like to him. She’d never known his wife and son well, but she’d been old enough to remember their departure after the boating accident, and the way that Hobson had retreated from the Dark Castle to his apartment in the City afterward.

She felt like she was intruding on something private, so she slipped the book back on the shelf. “About our…arrangement. While I’m working on the library, I would be staying here?”

He let the curtain drop and turned to face her again. “It would be the most practical way to do it. There’s a car in the garage, and we can have someone deliver groceries and the like.”

“And after the wedding?”

Hobson turned one hand palm-up in place of a shrug. “That’s up to you. You’ll be paid competitively, of course.”

Belle was faintly disappointed. He’d retreated behind a businessman’s manner again, and she never cared to hear talk of money. But that came of growing up without worrying about such things, and she chided herself for being so prideful as to even consider refusing a fair salary. He was the one insisting that she sequester herself out here, after all. “What if I want to visit my father?”

“The plane can bring you back on weekends.”

What a waste, sending a plane just for her! But having money made people look at things differently, so she kept her protest to herself. The Golds could certainly afford it, and _he_ was the one inconveniencing _her_.

She tugged on her blouse to straighten it and took a deep breath. It really had been ill-advised to play David’s game, and she truly didn’t want to cause trouble for the Golds. And the books were truly tempting. It just seemed…odd, to be talking about a job with Hobson. He wasn’t family, not by any stretch of the imagination, but he was something more than just another employer. “We’d probably better write it all down somewhere,” she suggested. “Just so I’m clear about what my duties would be.”

Hobson smiled and patted his breast pocket. “Already done,” he said wryly. “You’ll want to read it through, of course, but there’s nothing complicated about it.”

Belle’s mouth opened just a little – she couldn’t decide whether to be offended or amused. After a moment she decided on amused, and answered his smile with one of her own. “I should have known,” she said, holding out her hand expectantly. Hobson retrieved a few folded sheets of paper and handed them to her, and she took them over to the desk and flipped on the reading lamp there to see them better. “Is there anything you’re not prepared for?”

She wasn’t looking at him as she bent over the contract, and so she didn’t see why he paused before replying. “Every so often,” he said vaguely.

The contract was, as he’d promised, straightforward and simple: a list of mutual obligations and conditions, leaving her the latitude to do pretty much whatever she wanted with the library and the house as long as she left them in the same or better condition than before. The salary it offered was generous by her standards, but not so high that it was out of the realm of possibility for a conservator of her experience, and there was an ample budget for supplies. He’d obviously done some research before writing this document.

It didn’t take her long to read and Belle found nothing to object to – at least, nothing that she would admit. The residence clause gave her a twinge of regret at being discouraged from returning to what had long been her home, but it would be better for everyone if she stayed out of David’s life for the moment.

Finally she finished and looked through the desk drawers for a pen. There were a couple of dusty fountain pens that had long gone dry, but eventually she found a battered old ballpoint that had enough ink for a signature. Signing took only a moment, and then she turned to give the contract back to Hobson, who’d been waiting patiently on the other side of the library. “There,” she said awkwardly. “The deal’s struck.”

He gave her another thin-lipped smile, though it was briefer, and tucked away the contract. “Would you like to see the town?” he asked.

Belle raised her brows, surprised he’d offer such a thing. “Don’t you have to get back to work?”

He went to open the French doors again. “The spinning wheels will keep turning without me,” he said.

Hobson, making jokes? It seemed so incongruous that she laughed just a bit louder than the quip called for. “All right,” she said, following him back through the rest of the cottage. Their exchange had piqued her curiosity, and she decided it would be worth facing down her own shyness to see him in such a normal setting. She’d always thought of Hobson as all business, but even though she’d known in the back of her mind that he must have a life outside of his work, she’d never really tried to imagine him in a casual setting.

Maybe she could even figure out why he wanted to spend his free time with _her._


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry it's taken me this long to update! If you're still sticking with me, thanks - this is a great example of what finishing a dissertation will do to your free time. I'm hoping to post more often now that's over with.

Signing the contract below Belle’s name had felt…dirty, somehow. Like he was taking advantage of her, even though the offer was generous and he didn’t have to make it at all. But he was still forcing her to do something so she wouldn’t embarrass the family, and some long-buried notion of chivalry spurred Hobson to make the offer to squire her around the town.

Now that they were _in_ town, though, he didn’t have the faintest idea what to do. He’d spurned the dusty bicycles in the garage and suggested they take the car instead, despite it being – like everything on the island – a short drive. But he doubted his knee would hold up to it and he didn’t want her to see him limping, so they drove and he groused under his breath about the lack of parking near the main street until he finally found a spot and eased the car in.

Belle relaxed when they started making their way through the business district, although he noticed her carefully avoiding peering through the windows of the shops at the hopelessly overpriced merchandise. He’d never paid much attention to her clothing before, but since returning from Paris it was evident she’d acquired a more sophisticated sense of fashion; the cuts and fabrics he’d seen her wearing were of good quality, and he recognized a few pieces as remnants of older designer collections, no doubt acquired while she was in Paris. And then there had been the gold dress, obviously a previous year’s couture offering.

“Do you miss Paris?” he asked, breaking the uncomfortable silence that was growing between them.

She gave a small smile. “Not yet, but I will.”

“You liked it there?”

“I loved it.” Her tone was fervent, her eyes distant as she no doubt reminisced about some part of her time there. The misty look vanished after a moment as she remembered he was there. “You’d probably hate it, though.”

He couldn’t hide his surprise, almost losing his grip on his cane. “What? Why?”

She’d reached out to catch the cane as he bobbled it, and for a moment her hand brushed his. She jumped back as though startled, though he could catch the hint of a blush on her cheeks. “It's all about pleasure,” she mumbled. “They work hard. They just know when to quit and enjoy themselves.”

Implying that he didn’t. Of course she would think he did nothing but work; since Millie had departed for Paris, work was the only thing that could keep his mind off his idiotic misstep. He’d taken pride in his business skills, his deals and the money he spun out of the company, but until now he’d never really thought of it as something devoid of pleasure.

Belle seemed to realize she’d said something to upset him, because she quickly changed the subject, pointing across the street at a vacant building. “What a beautiful building! Nobody builds with brick anymore.”

He glanced over at the thing, vaguely recognizing it from an old property evaluation. “Late 1800s, I think.”

She chuckled. “In Paris, they'd consider that brand-new. I hope they don't tear it down.”

Ah, here was something he could do to make her feel better. “They won’t,” he said, trying not to sound smug. “I own it, that whole block.” He fished around for the best thing to say, and finally settled on “I donated it to the village as a library.”

As Belle exclaimed in delight, her eyes glowing as she no doubt imagined the old building filled with shelves of books and bustling with activity, Gold looked around him. All of a sudden he wanted to do…something. Something nice. He spotted a cart at the end of the block and excused himself to Belle for a moment, then made his way carefully down the brick walkway.

The exchange with the old woman pushing the cart took only a moment, though there was a certain amount of cackling and a knowing look on her part when he frowned and handed over a bill that probably could have bought a whole bucket of her wares. But the look on Belle’s face was worth the trouble when he returned to her side and presented her with his purchase.

“Here,” he said, holding out the velvety red rose he’d chosen. “If you’ll have it.”

A hesitant smile spread across her face, and she took the rose with a hint of – a curtsey? Yes, she was actually curtseying, and now he knew she was teasing him. “Thank you,” she said, tucking the petals under her nose and inhaling. “It’s lovely.”

He shrugged, trying to look nonchalant. “It’s good to support local businesses,” he said offhandedly. “Are you getting hungry?”

“Famished. Do you know someplace good for lunch?”

Something mischievous stirred in his chest, a feeling he’d thought lost with Bae’s departure. He glanced down the street, hoping the vendors he wanted were still in business, and offered Belle his arm. “A very exclusive establishment,” he intoned as she hesitantly tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. “I’ll introduce you to the cook.”

* * *

Belle scooted herself closer to the fire and held out her hands, warming them by the flames. “That was delicious,” she said, “but I couldn’t eat another bite.”

Hobson tossed aside an empty clamshell, eyeing the few that were left next to the remains of roasted potatoes and a napkin-wrapped loaf of bread. “It’s too late to free them,” he quipped, settling the almost-empty bottle of wine they’d been sharing deeper into the sand to keep it cool.

She smiled at him, the first unabashed smile he’d seen on her face, and suddenly he couldn’t stop looking at her, at the way the warm air from the fire made her curls sway gently against her cheek. “You know, you’re not the person everyone says you are,” she ventured.

His expression froze, and he made a show of brushing his hands together to avoid looking at her. “Oh? And what do they say I am?” he asked delicately.

It was Belle’s turn to look uncomfortable. “I…uh…I’d rather not say.”

“Oh, come now, dearie. I’ve got a thick hide.”

She frowned, just a little, in what looked like distaste. “That gold runs in your veins instead of blood, and that you love to trick people into making deals they regret.” She looked down, then snatched up her wineglass and drained it in a gulp.

He chuckled, though the sound was hollow even in his own ears. “They forgot the part where I skin my enemies and upholster my office chairs with their pelts.”

Belle’s mouth dropped open in shock, and for a moment he was afraid he’d said the wrong thing, but then she began to giggle. Hobson couldn’t help the answering grin on his own lips, and he took a hasty sip of his own wine to cover it up; he wasn’t quite ready to let go of his forbidding persona even if Belle did make him laugh.

She finally recovered herself, though he suspected the wine was behind her snorts as she suppressed the laughter. Silence rose between them, though it wasn’t an uncomfortable one. Hobson looked out at the sky over the shore, watching for a while as the light faded from the day’s flat grey into something softer and more muted.

Then Belle surprised him with a question. “Do you remember the day you saved my life?”

For a second he gaped at her in confusion, wondering what on earth she meant. Saved her life? Surely he’d have remembered doing such a thing…

She saw his hesitation, and went on. “My father had driven your mother and David out for a lesson of some sort.”

“How old was he?”

Belle bit her lip as she thought. “I don't know. Eleven or twelve?”

“That would have been creative writing.” Hobson smiled. “A misunderstanding. He’d just seen some medieval movie or other, and thought he was going to get _riding_ lessons.”

She laughed. “Anyway, I wanted one of the books from the library, off the top shelves. I was too small to climb the ladder and I was wearing the wrong shoes to boot. You came up behind me and startled me, and I fell. And you caught me.”

He remembered now – he’d been about twenty or so, home from university for a holiday. “I wasn’t a very good catch,” he said, shaking his head ruefully. “You knocked your head on a shelf.”

“And you stayed with me all afternoon until my father came home. So I wouldn’t fall asleep if I had a concussion.” Her eyes flicked up to meet his, and he found himself fascinated with the minute wrinkles at their corners.

“And you didn't cry,” he said. “You were very brave.”

She hesitated. “No,” she said softly. “I was…well, I was terrified. To a seven-year-old you were pretty intimidating.”

“Oh.” He rolled the stem of his wineglass between his fingers. “I suppose I’ve never been that good with children.”

“That’s not true!” Belle exclaimed. “I remember when you and Bae – oh, damn. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought him up.” She reddened in chagrin. She knew the story of the boating accident, though she’d been off at some school or other when it happened. The newspapers had noised the whole mess about incessantly for weeks afterward, those bastards.

He took a slow breath. “No, it’s all right. I just…I haven’t thought about him in some time.” He looked down at his glass. “Too long, really.”

Belle hesitated, then scooted closer, stopping when their legs were almost touching. “You still love him very much.”

“Of course. But I made an unforgiveable mistake, and I lost him.”

She reached out and put her hand on his, and for a moment his heart fluttered. “And you’ve thrown yourself into your work to…what? Surely not to forget him.”

“Never,” Hobson said harshly. “All the work, the business, it was like I needed to try and prove that I deserved to have him back. As if it would somehow magically make everything better.” He fell silent, thinking that he’d let his armor down too far. What was it about Belle that made him want to do that?

She took her hand away without him realizing that she’d left it so long. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I really shouldn’t have brought it up.”

Hobson gave a shaky laugh. “It’s no matter.” He began to pack up the remains of their picnic. “I can hardly blame you for being curious.”

She moved off the blanket and began scooping sand over the fire to put it out. “I just didn’t want it to seem like I’m trying to…to find your weaknesses,” she said.

His mouth twisted in a rueful smile. “Old monsters like me don’t bother about things like that.”

She tilted her head and gave him a sardonic look. “You’re not a monster, Hobson.”

“That’s not what some people would have you believe.” He tossed the empty clamshells out into the sand and recorked the wine. “David certainly used the word a few times after the party.”

Belle shook her head. “Well, I expect that rosebush was pretty painful. I’ll never understand why you two were always doing that. Shoving each other off the docks or racing your bicycles or…or that time with the sheep!”

Hobson laughed again, this time with better humor than before. The incident with the sheep _had_ been memorable, although his mother had never forgiven him for the scratches it had left on the hardwood floors. “I imagine that all brothers do that to each other, even half-brothers. It’s not that I didn’t like him; I do. I just don’t know what to do with him.” He held out a hand to help Belle to her feet and gathered up the basket with the remains of their dinner. “You know, when I started working he used to love to come into the office. He'd sit behind my desk and write memos, or pretend to make calls. But then one day he just…stopped. And I suppose I never understood why.”

Belle appeared to be thinking as they picked their way across the sand to the boardwalk. “You know, my father once asked him about that,” she said. “And David said, ‘What do they need me for? Hobson is there.’”

Hobson stopped on the boardwalk, turning to look down at her. “Listen, Belle, I do real work in the real world. David watches from the North Shore.”

To his surprise, in spite of his gruff tone, Belle smiled up at him. “I know you work in the real world, and you're awfully good at it. I'll bet you haven't made a bad business decision since David was writing memos at your desk. But that's work. Where do you live, Hobson?”

He couldn’t answer her. Not there, and not in the car on the way back to the airport, or on the flight home. Because he didn’t really know the answer himself.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been forever since I updated this! I'm trying to get back into the swing of things, so bear with me - I promise it will be finished this year! (This one is short, but for the sake of moving things along, I figured it was time to post what I could.)

Belle wasn’t expecting her father to be waiting up for her, but there Maurice was, newspaper abandoned in his lap and a cup of tea cooling on the arm of his chair. He nearly upset it when she came through the door, and she rushed to rescue the teetering saucer before it could splash everywhere. “Papa, what are you doing up?” she chided, sneaking a glance at her watch. “It’s late!”

Maurice sighed. “Waiting for you,” he replied, folding and unfolding the newspaper as she set the tea aside on a table. “You left so suddenly.”

“Oh,” Belle said, realizing that she had indeed forgotten to leave a note; she usually ate dinner in the kitchen with her father and the rest of the staff, and he would have been expecting her. “I’m sorry. Hobson took me to Martha’s Vineyard, to see the library in the cottage. He wants me to restore it.”

“Hobson did?” Maurice frowned.

Belle perched herself on the edge of another chair with an inward sigh of her own. Her papa meant well, she knew, but sometimes his protective streak made her want to grind her teeth. “Yes. When I went up to see David he came with me, and we got to talking about the work I did in Paris. Since I haven’t got a job right now, he suggested working on some of the books they’ve got at the cottage.”

“Working for him, you mean.” Her father reached out and took Belle’s hand. “Belle, I know you want to stay here so you can be close to David. But working for Hobson is…I just wanted better for you. You’re so clever, you could have any job you wanted in the City.”

She shook her head. “Not right now, Papa. I’m not staying here because of David, it’s just that I haven’t found anything yet. And Hobson was a perfect gentleman. He baked clams for me for dinner, and we ate right there on the beach.” Belle still felt a little giddy at the thought; she’d never expected the elder Gold brother to have such a whimsical side.

She glanced at the rose Hobson had given her earlier, peeking out of her shoulderbag. More than just whimsy, actually. “What was he like?” she asked absently. “When he was younger, I mean.”

Belle caught the twist of her father’s lips before he replied. “Shorter.”

It must have been the wine that started her sniggering, because she wasn’t normally so rude. “He’s always been shorter!” she said, giggling, as she pulled her hand from Maurice’s. “Everyone’s shorter than you.” It had always been a disappointment of hers, that she’d never gotten her father’s height. But she knew her small stature reminded him of her mother, and she tried not to complain about it.

Maurice’s dour mood had finally broken, and he chuckled along with her. “I haven’t forgotten the summer you spent hanging upside down from your tree so you would grow faster. I thought we would never get all the tangles out of your hair.”

The glow of the remaining wine became a blush as Belle recalled her singularly silly scheme. She’d not only had to endure tangled hair, but pounding headaches as well. Although to her younger self it had seemed worth it, at the time; after falling off the library’s ladder she’d developed a wariness of heights and decided the best solution was to grow tall enough to reach the books on the high shelves.

“Well, I suppose it didn’t do any lasting damage,” she replied, standing up and covering a sudden yawn. “I’d better get to bed. If I’m going to be working on the library at the cottage I’ll need to move out there for a few weeks, and I haven’t even gotten everything unpacked from Paris.”

“Belle.” Before she could leave the room, Maurice reached out and took her hand gently. “Be careful. The business world that Hobson works in…it’s brutal. There’s always some sort of scheme or maneuver under every deal that gets made, and I don’t want you to be caught up in something you can’t control.”

Belle covered her father’s hand with her free one and patted it comfortingly, although she had had the same pangs of warning herself on hearing Hobson’s deal. “You said it yourself – no one should decide my fate but me. I know Hobson offered this job to me so it won’t look like I’m trying to break up David’s wedding, but I really do believe he has my interests at heart. And he didn’t force me to do anything. I agreed to it.”

She knew her father was unassured by her confidence in Hobson, but she believed her words even if he didn’t. Call it instinct, or intuition…or maybe it was because of the way he’d looked at her across the campfire that evening. She wanted to trust him.

Somehow, without her realizing it, he’d gone from a distant, intimidating figure of authority to something else entirely.

* * *

The CEO of Gold Corp. was, in fact, taking a break from the kind of scheming Maurice was so wary of.

Hobson stared at the brass paperweight on his desk, a compass that Bae had once insisted his mother buy for a Christmas gift. It reminded him of the boat and the day that had ruined everything, but he wouldn’t ever take it off the desk; it was one of the few things he had of Bae that his mother hadn’t packed up to take to Paris. Ruby chattered on about his appointments, and he listened to the list with half an ear, but his thoughts were also occupied with Belle.

He wasn’t so dried-out and old that he couldn’t recognize infatuation when it struck, but unlike in the past, he had absolutely no idea what to do about it. Never mind that he was a reclusive misanthrope with a penchant for driving away anyone who tried to be friendly – Belle simply seemed to overlook that. Her trip to Paris had truly changed her, and he wondered what had happened to the mousy little girl who’d been more apt to climb up a tree than hold a conversation with him.

“And you’ve got a teleconference with the international bureau at four…”

“That old brick building we own at the Vineyard,” he said, interrupting Ruby’s recitation. “You know it?”

She narrowed her eyes at him just a bit; he’d never mentioned the place before, and he knew he’d just piqued her inquisitiveness. “Yes?” she drawled slowly.

He avoided meeting her gaze, instead shuffling a stack of paper across the desk. “Have one of the Victors see if there’s any tax advantage to donating it to the town as a library annex.”

There was a beat before she replied, and he could practically hear the gears ticking away in her head. “Of course. And if there isn’t?”

Hobson glanced up, then waved a hand dismissively. “Then do it anyway. I want some good press to go along with the merger.” He’d finally managed to pin Regina down to terms, although not without pulling out one of his trump cards and threatening to expose exactly how many trade secrets she’d run off with on forming her own company.

Ruby made a note in her book and then stuck the pen behind her ear, a habit he’d never been able to break her of. He vaguely remembered that she’d listed waitressing on her resume from her college years. “Is there anything else, Mr. Gold?” she asked just a tad too sweetly.

He narrowed his eyes and decided to have a bit of fun with his secretary. “I’ll be wanting two tickets for tomorrow evening for whatever Broadway show nobody can get tickets for. And a table at the Carlyle for dinner and drinks.”

Ruby’s eyes widened, though she was just well-trained enough not to gape at him. “For who?”

“Me.”

She recovered quickly, he had to give her credit for that. “The hardest tickets to get will be for a musical.”

Hobson kept his expression serious. “Yes?”

“You know that means there’s going to be singing and dancing. Possibly a chorus line.”

He raised his brows. “Are you trying to say that you don’t think I’ll enjoy it?”

“It’s, uh…uncharacteristic of you, sir.”

If _that_ wasn’t the understatement of the century, he didn’t know what was. “Just get the tickets. And get me on the phone with Belle French; I need to discuss a contract with her.”

Ruby knew very well who Belle French was, and that under normal circumstances there would have been absolutely no reason why he’d have any reason to want to talk with her. His assistant’s murmured affirmative was accompanied by a toothy smile, and Hobson did his best not to groan as he realized his mistake. Ruby had spent years working for both him and his mother, and she knew the house staff very well. If there was anyone left who hadn’t heard about the CEO and the chauffer’s daughter going off on jaunts together, it wouldn’t last long.

He’d started making some very questionable decisions since he started paying attention to Belle.

* * *

The next day Belle presented herself at the office, promptly and as requested, with a list of supplies and equipment she would need for the library project. Ruby let her in to his office and Gold rose from his chair more hastily than he would have liked, smoothing his coat and reaching for his cane with nervous fingers. “Good afternoon.”

Belle smiled shyly, apparently not as confident now that they were in his domain rather than a neutral setting like the beach. “Hi.”

“Please, sit down,” Hobson said with a wave of his hand at the couch. “Make yourself comfortable.”

“Thanks.” Belle’s attention was on the room rather than him as she lowered herself to the couch, smoothing out her skirts and tucking her ankles together demurely. “This is such a big office.”

Hobson didn’t think about it much, but she wasn’t wrong. It was a corner office, laid out to have space for space’s sake and not because he needed to cram huge numbers of people into it for meetings. He rarely used the bar that took up one wall, but the ensuite bathroom and closet saw a lot of use; he often worked late and sometimes availed himself of the very couch she was sitting on so he’d be ready for calls with the company’s more distant international partners. “This is where I do that real work in the real world, instead of living.”

Belle looked simultaneously embarrassed and pleased. “You remembered.”

“Well, it doesn't come up every day. Would you like some tea?” That, of course, made him think of the teacup he’d rescued after her flight from David’s room before she’d left for Paris. He’d meant to return it to the kitchen and have it repaired, but he’d never got around to it. It lived on his desk at home, and until a few days ago he’d barely given it a spare thought.

“No, thanks. Weren’t we going to discuss the materials list for the restoration work?”

Hobson shook himself out of his cloud of contemplation and met Belle’s eyes. Wonderful, now she’d think he was being deliberately rude to her. “Of course. I had the accountants draw up a standard invoice; all you have to do is fill it in and we’ll order everything.” He fished the document in question and a blank pad of paper out of a drawer and came around his desk to join her, taking a seat in one of the chairs opposite the couch instead of the one next to her. If he got any more distracted… “Go ahead and make a list,” he said, offering the papers with one of the pens that lived in his pockets. “And don’t skimp. I can afford expense if it means the job will get done properly.”

Belle took the papers and pen and nibbled on her bottom lip for a moment, then balanced the pad on her knee and started writing. “It’s a little hard to start from scratch,” she said as she wrote. “Most libraries with rare book collections already have things like frames and weights.”

Hobson watched as the list grew under her pen. “Rice starch and wheat paste? Are you stocking the kitchen as well?”

“They’re for glue. For the bindings. Chemically-based glues can damage older paper, but the original bookbinders would have used handmade sealants.”

“Ah.” He tried to think of a way to keep her talking, if only to distract himself from the way her hands moved. “Your apprenticeship in Paris. Was it everything you hoped?”

Belle peered up at him through her eyelashes. “Making sure Gold Corp. gets a good value for its investment?”

Coming from anyone else the comment would have been impertinent, but the smile playing around Belle’s lips told Hobson she was teasing him. “Of course,” he replied, taking the bait and running with it. “I’d hardly be upholding my own reputation if I didn’t. In my spare time,” he added, leaning in conspiratorially, “I go through everyone’s desks and count the paperclips.”

That surprised a laugh from Belle, one that crinkled her eyes in a way that he was beginning to find fascinating. “It was an amazing apprenticeship,” she said, still smiling. “There aren’t many opportunities like that for people in my field. And I’ve always wanted to see the world. Paris seemed like a good place to start.” She bent back over the invoice and made a few more notes. “There. That should be enough for now. If I need to order more, what should I do?”

“I’ll take care of it, just let me know.” Hobson made the offer absently, already focusing on what he wanted to ask next. “While you’re here…would you care to have dinner with me?”

Belle’s brows went up. “Don’t you have to work?”

Hobson smirked gently. “I think being the head of the company gives me a _few_ perks. I had reservations at the Carlyle, so…”

Belle bit her lip, then stood up and set the invoice down on the table. “Actually, I have a better idea.”


End file.
